Debra Spencer
A Proposal
For almost 30 years I was adjunct faculty here. For the last 10 years I’ve been contract faculty. That’s nearly 40 years of discussing and lamenting over the two-tier system, saying how unfair it is. It’s worn me down. I don’t want to discuss it any more. Yes, it’s awful. But isn’t it up to the administration to do something? The chancellor’s office? The legislature?
They’ll never do anything, because the system suits them. It saves them a whole lot of money. Sometimes I think that the system suits us contract faculty too. It even suited me when I was adjunct: time instead of money seemed a fair trade.
But if we really want to take action and make salaries fair, all faculty should be paid the same amount for the units we teach. Allowances should of course be made for those who have more education—Ph.D.s should get more per unit than those with masters’ degrees—but otherwise, make it so everyone gets equal pay for equal work.
We have three choices. (1) We could consider this proposal, (2) we could admit that we really don’t want to do anything about how colleagues working alongside of us, doing the same job—some maybe even better than we do it—are getting paid far less than we are, or (3) we could go on talking and talking about it, and lamenting, and adding tiny decimals to the percent of contract pay that adjuncts get. We can hope that assuages our consciences—that and the money we get, which some of us feel isn’t nearly enough. After almost 30 years of living on adjunct pay, what I make now seems princely. I admit that one catastrophic illness would wipe out our bank account, but that could happen no matter how much we make. Nothing really protects us—not money, anyway.
For what it’s worth (and you may argue I have no idea what it’s worth), this is my proposal. Someone do the math, and let’s see what it would mean.