{"id":5119,"date":"2017-01-17T09:20:52","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T14:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2017-01-16T18:45:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T23:45:39","slug":"a-brief-look-at-academic-economic-disparity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5119","title":{"rendered":"A Brief Look At Academic Economic Disparity"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a part of my alt-ac career<\/a>, I do a lot of thinking and writing in a lot of diverse areas. I write about human augmentation, artificial intelligence, philosophy\u00a0of mind, and the occult<\/a>,\u00a0and I work\u00a0with\u00a0great people to put together\u00a0conferences on pop culture and academia<\/a>, all\u00a0while trying to make a clear case for\u00a0how important it is to look at the intersection of all of those things.\u00a0As a result of my wide array of interests, there are always\u00a0numerous conferences happening in my fields,\u00a0every year, to which I should be submitting and which I should anyways attempt to attend. Conferences are places to make friends, develop contacts, and hear and respond to new perspectives within our fields. And I would really\u00a0love to attend even a fraction of these conferences, but the fact is that I am not able to afford\u00a0them. The cruel irony of most University System\u00a0structures is that they offer the least travel funding assistance to those faculty members who need it most.<\/p>\n

To my mind,\u00a0the equation\u00a0should be\u00a0pretty simple: Full-Time Pay > Part-Time\u00a0Pay. The fact that someone with a full time position at an\u00a0institution makes more money means that while\u00a0any\u00a0travel assistance they receive is nice<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0they\u00a0are less likely to\u00a0need<\/em><\/strong> it as much as\u00a0someone\u00a0who is\u00a0barely subsisting as an adjunct. For adjuncts who are working on at least two revenue streams,\u00a0a little extra assistance in the form of the\u00a0University System arranging\u00a0their rules\u00a0to provide adjuncts\u00a0with the necessary funding for conference and research travel, could make all the difference between that conference being attended\u00a0or that research being completed, and\u2026 not.\u00a0But if it does get done,\u00a0then the work done by those adjuncts\u00a0would more likely be attributed to their funding institutions<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Think: If my paper is good enough to get accepted to a long-running international and\u00a0peer-reviewed conference, don’t you want me thanking one of\u00a0your University System’s Institutions for getting me there? Wouldn’t that\u00a0do more to raise the profile of\u00a0the\u00a0University System than my\u00a0calling myself an “Independent Scholar,” or “Unaffiliated?” Because, for\u00a0an adjunct with minimal support from the University System, scrabbling to find a way to make registration, plane tickets,\u00a0and<\/em><\/strong> accommodations like childcare,\u00a0there is\u00a0really\u00a0no incentive whatsoever to\u00a0thank<\/em><\/strong> a University System that didn’t\u00a0do\u00a0much\u00a0at all to help\u00a0with those costs.\u00a0Why\u00a0should they\u00a0even mention them in their submission, at all?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But if an adjunct gets<\/em><\/strong> that assistance\u2026 Well then\u00a0they’d\u00a0feel welcome, wouldn’t they? Then they’d feel appreciated<\/em><\/strong>, wouldn’t they? And\u00a0from that point on,\u00a0they’re probably\u00a0much more willing and likely to want everyone they talk to at that conference or research institution to know the name of the institution and system that took care of them. Aren’t They?<\/p>\n

My job is great, by the way, and the faculty and administrative staff in my department are wonderful<\/em><\/strong>. They have contributed to my professional\u00a0development in every\u00a0way they\u00a0possibly can, and I have seen\u00a0them do the same for many other adjuncts. Opportunities like temporary full-time positions provide extra\u00a0income every so often, as well as a view to the workings (and benefits)\u00a0of full-time faculty life. But at the end of the day we\u00a0are adjuncts<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0and there is, in every institution where I’ve studied or worked, a stark dichotomy between what rules and allowances are made for full time employees (many) and those which are made for adjuncts (few).\u00a0This dichotomy\u00a0isn’t down to\u00a0any one\u00a0department, or any one college, or even in fact\u00a0any one\u00a0University. It’s down the University System;<\/em><\/strong> it is down to how\u00a0that system is\u00a0administered;\u00a0and it is down to the culture<\/em><\/strong> of\u00a0University Systems Administration, Worldwide.<\/p>\n

So if\u00a0you’re reading this, and you’re a part of that culture, let me just say to you, right now: There are a lot of good people toiling away in poverty, people\u00a0doing work that is of a high enough quality to get them into conferences or get them published or get them interviewed for comment in national publications.\u00a0There are good people working for you who\u00a0can’t (or\u00a0who are simply\u00a0disinclined to) raise the profile of your universities, because the funding system has never been arranged to even the playing field for them.\u00a0They would be far more inclined to sing your praises, if you would just give them\u00a0a little boost into the choir box.<\/p>\n

Simply put, by not valuing and helping your adjuncts, you are actively hurting yourselves.<\/p>\n

If you are an administrator or a tenured\u00a0or\u00a0tenure-track professor, do know that there is something that you can do: Use your position and power as leverage to fight for greater equality of University System support. Recognize that your adjunct faculty is no longer only focused on teaching, without the responsibilities and requirements of a research-oriented career. Many of them are trying to write, to speak, to teach, and to engage\u00a0our wider cultural discourse, and they are trying to do it while working for you.<\/p>\n

\n
If you like what you read, here, and want to see more like it, then please consider becoming either a recurring Patreon<\/a> subscriber or making a one-time donation to the Tip Jar<\/a><\/span><\/em>, it would be greatly appreciated. A large part of how I support myself in the endeavor to think in public is via those mechanisms.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
And thank you.
\n<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a part of my alt-ac career, I do a lot of thinking and writing in a lot of diverse areas. I write about human augmentation, artificial intelligence, philosophy\u00a0of mind, and the occult,\u00a0and I work\u00a0with\u00a0great people to put together\u00a0conferences on pop culture and academia, all\u00a0while trying to make a clear case for\u00a0how important it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,15,1148,1146,1152,1147,1150,548,1151,1149,1153],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-future-worth-thinking-about","tag-academia","tag-adjuncting","tag-alt-ac","tag-alternative-academia","tag-economics","tag-inequality","tag-money","tag-part-time-teaching","tag-systemic-disparity","tag-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WByP-1kz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4842,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4842","url_meta":{"origin":5119,"position":0},"title":"Rundown: Theorizing the Web 2015","author":"Damien P. 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