Often times, unfair stereotypes about the homeless lead some to believe that they are lazy and their situation could be improved simply by obtaining employment. This perspective doesn’t take into account the many reasons why someone might be homeless in the first place—including those people who work but don’t actually make enough to afford stable housing. In the case of adjunct professors, not only are many of them making poverty wages, some of them are turning to desperate means to make ends meet.
Sex work is one of the more unusual ways that adjuncts have avoided living in poverty, and perhaps even homelessness. A quarter of part-time college academics (many of whom are adjuncts, though it’s not uncommon for adjuncts to work 40 hours a week or more) are said to be enrolled in public assistance programs such as Medicaid.
They resort to food banks and Goodwill, and there is even an adjuncts’ cookbook that shows how to turn items like beef scraps, chicken bones and orange peel into meals. And then there are those who are either on the streets or teetering on the edge of losing stable housing.
The Guardian interviewed several academics who are already or are close to becoming homeless. One of them turned to sex work so that she could make enough money to save her from eviction. These are people who have earned advanced degrees and are teaching courses at institutions but do not have full time, tenure-track positions. Without full-time employment at one institution which comes with benefits and a steady paycheck, they are forced to string together multiple course loads at different schools which doesn’t pay well. In fact, the average salary for adjunct professors is $22,041 annually compared to $47,500 for full-time faculty. Ironically, adjuncts are often teaching more courses in a term than full-time faculty—sometimes teaching as many as six in a semester.
Adjuncting has grown as funding for public universities has fallen by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2009. Private institutions also recognize the allure of part-time professors: generally they are cheaper than full-time staff, don’t receive benefits or support for their personal research, and their hours can be carefully limited so they do not teach enough to qualify for health insurance.
This is why adjuncts have been called “the fast-food workers of the academic world”: among labor experts adjuncting is defined as “precarious employment”, a growing category that includes temping and sharing-economy gigs such as driving for Uber. An American Sociological Association taskforce focusing on precarious academic jobs, meanwhile, has suggested that “faculty employment is no longer a stable middle-class career”.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2yA1qqR
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