Adjunct pay

On one point alone, Peter Collinge's letter in the December 2002/January 2003 issue was correct--the statistics quoted in "Portrait of the adjunct as an older man" [October 2002] don't reflect reality. Unfortunately, neither does Peter Collinge.

The adjunct salaries quoted were far too high, not undervalued as Collinge implied. For example, Onondaga Community College pays approximately $2,500 per course, and SUNY Cortland and LeMoyne College both pay roughly $2,000 per course. Even Syracuse University doesn't pay adjuncts anything close to the "Portrait" figures.

For summer session courses, LeMoyne College offers $4,500 a course--obviously because that's needed to attract full-time professors to the task. But then why are these courses worth $2,500 more than per-course assignments during the regular terms?

Further, most colleges limit the number of courses adjuncts can teach, forcing them to become not only wage slaves but gypsies--not to mention the subsequent difficulty in finding time on campus to help students in those courses. More insulting, however, is this persistent claim from far too many full-time professors that committee work, advisement and governance cover the difference in salary. Colleges should price the value of nonclassroom time. Given such an extreme disparity, I suspect I'd rather take jobs on committees and as an adviser, since apparently those tasks pay far better than teaching.

--Tim Emerson
Munnsville, NY

Peter Collinge says he does not want to pit one group of faculty against another. He then proceeds to argue against "equal pay for equal work" for part-time faculty by raising a red herring often proffered by full-time faculty who do not want to justify their higher salaries and who do not want adjuncts to have equal pay.

Mr. Collinge suggests that part-time faculty do not deserve equal pay because full-time faculty often engage in nonteaching activities.

First, he ignores the fact that many part-time faculty do in fact engage in these activities, yet they are not paid for them.

Second, he ignores the fact that many part-time faculty are quite capable of fulfilling these roles and would love to do so, but they are arbitrarily barred from doing so. There is nothing but full-timer hegemony standing in the way of part-time faculty engaging in nonteaching activities.

Third, he conveniently ignores the fact that part-timers have many large out-of-pocket expenses--which full-timers do not have. The majority of part-timers nationwide still lack health and retirement benefits, must maintain home offices, pay for their own professional development and travel, and have classes cancelled at the last moment (without compensation). They are routinely denied unemployment compensation when they are unemployed, and most adjuncts are unemployed part of the year. And many part-timers have thousands of dollars in commuter costs between colleges. Perhaps we should demand "equal pay (and benefits) for equal work," to make our second-class citizenship more obvious.

--Keith Hoeller
Seattle, WA

Free speech

Although "The Boundaries of Free Speech" [cover story, December 2002/January 2003] makes a number of good points about the loss of free speech on our campuses, I would not blame capitalism entirely. I think Robert Kuttner errs when he says that the unraveling of social and democratic values is the result as money intrudes into politics. This is only partially true. Free speech was tossed out the window when neo-Marxist academics introduced the concept of political correctness decades ago and severely punished anyone who did not think the way they did. This is exactly what happens in fascist countries, as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco showed us. In my opinion, freedom of speech on our campuses will only return when the idea of political correctness is completely abolished in the United States.

--Harlan Hamilton
New York, NY