Fish states that, “Universities … do not hire the most experienced teachers, but rather the cheapest teachers.” After paying momentary lip service to the reality that no one specifically is to blame for the rise of adjunct instructors, Fish then spends the rest of the article blaming adjunct instructors, even going so far as to say that we adjuncts represent a lack of values for “higher learning.”

Yes, we are the cheapest teachers, in that we get paid dramatically less than our tenured colleagues. But I resent greatly that Fish compares adjuncts everywhere to shameful schools like the University of Phoenix, simply because he sees most colleges and universities are now basically “for profit” organizations. Invoking the University of Phoenix to win an argument about academia is as fucked a fallacy as invoking Nazis to win…well, just about any other argument.

I work as an adjunct English instructor at several community colleges. Like most other part-timers, I do this full-time, meaning I drive between 3-4 different districts in order to cobble together a living. The reason I have to do this is that in addition to getting paid about 30% less per hour for doing the exact same work as my tenured colleagues, I also am restricted from teaching more than 1-2 classes per semester in each district. So in order to get a full workload of classes, I need to be on the books at several different districts. This is no easy task, because most districts are not hiring, thanks to constant budget cuts by our state’s governor. Even when I do manage to get hired to teach one class in one district, I have no guarantee whatsoever that I will ever again be offered a class, and thus every four months or so (depending on whether the district I teach at is semester-based or quarter-based) I have to reapply for my own job. Needless to say, I get no benefits whatsoever: if I am sick, I have to pay out of my pocket for my healthcare, and if being sick caused me to miss work then I get docked pay. I haven’t been to a dentist in 2 years.

Yet what Fish fails to observe is that most adjuncts have the exact same qualifications as our full-time colleagues. None of us, tenured or adjunct, are in this “business” for the money. Despite a society, which sneers “those who can’t do, teach,” even in this economy we could all find better paying work somewhere.

So why do we do it? I’ve talked to a lot of professors, and believe it or not, even the most dispirited, tired, beaten down of them still expresses a desire to make a positive difference in the lives of their students. They don’t all feel that they succeed, but they all understand the value of education and that their role as teacher is critical, in fact, the most critical component, beyond even the students themselves.

So what is the difference between adjuncts and the tenured? It isn’t our degrees, and it isn’t our experience. It isn’t our training, and it isn’t our capabilities. Adjuncts are not instructors who have repeatedly applied for full-time work and been rejected due to lack of a higher degree, lack of experience, or lack of capability.

Adjuncts are adjuncts, and not tenured, because there are no tenured positions available. In all the districts that I teach, only about 30% of the instructors are full-time, leaving everyone else to be an adjunct. Before our recent budget crisis, most schools would hire one new full-time professor per year.

That position would receive literally hundreds of applications, all from highly qualified adjuncts, many of who have worked at the very school in question for years (if not decades). Who gets the position? It’s a crapshoot. To be picked as the one person for a full-time job out of five hundred applicants is just a matter of luck. Sometimes it goes to the part-timer with the most seniority, other times to a fresh, young thirty-nine year old teacher who has just received their doctorate. To imply that something was inferior about all those other applicants is both ignorant and disrespectful.

Now we have a budget crisis, funding to state colleges has been slashed again, and all schools in the state have a hiring freeze, meaning they have gone from having one open full-time position to having zero.
Fish concludes by saying he was born at just right time, and that were he born today then he’d not be able to receive the quality education that he got in the good old days (you know, when women weren’t allowed to be doctors, and the entire student body was nice and white and clean). According to his website, “Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. His new book on higher education, “Save the World On Your Own Time,” has just been published.”

Congratulations, Dean Fish. It sounds like you were born at just the right time after all. No, not the right time to receive a proper higher education as you conclude in your New York Times op-ed, but at just the right time to still get hired as a full-time employee in academia. In the old days, universities were hiring, and my wife and I would have been able to get full-time work. After all, we’re both highly qualified, and committed teachers. Today, that fact is irrelevant.

Yes, Dean Fish, if you were born when I was, things would have been different. Oh, the quality of your education would have been the same, if not better, despite what you might think about all us adjuncts teaching most of the classes. The difference would have come after you got that great education, because you would have found yourself in a position just like mine. You see, there just aren’t any full-time positions available anymore, and so you would have been forced, despite your top education and desire to teach, to work as a part-time instructor, just like the rest of us.

How long do you think you could have handled it? Something tells me you would have quit within a week and enrolled at business school.