Hu XingmingtextHerb Childress's The Death of Academics: A History of the Demise of American Doctors is a book about temporary workers in American universities, originally titled The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission. Part-Time Bottom: How American Universities Betray Faculty, Students, and Mission. The author, Childis, holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Behavior from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee Campus) and worked as a temporary faculty member at various universities for many years after graduation. The book is based on his first-hand experience and investigation of the living conditions of his peers, and mainly complains about temporary faculty and calls for better treatment for universities.
To understand this book accurately, it is necessary to understand the difference between temporary workers in Chinese universities and American universities. There are many PhDs graduating from each major every year. The number of PhD graduates far exceeds the number of tenure-track faculty vacancies at universities. Even if there are vacancies, many universities do not give tenure to recent doctoral graduates, but leave the opportunity to doctoral students who graduated a few years earlier, and let recent doctoral graduates first take up non-tenured teaching positions such as doctoral postgraduates, researchers, or assistant professors, usually within 3 to 6 years: if they do not get tenure, they will be dismissed. As a result, young teachers in Chinese universities who have not received tenure often derided themselves as "temporary workers". However, non-tenured professors, such as postdoctoral students, researchers, and assistant professors, are still more decent positions in American universities, and the pay is much better than that of adjunct professors.
The Death of Qualifications: A History of the Demise of American Doctors
Herb Childis |Book.
Yang Yi |Translate.
Shanghai People's Publishing House.
September 2023.
In the United States, many Ph.D. graduates choose to become part-time teachers because they can't apply for postdoctoral positions, researchers, or assistant professors, and want to stay in college. According to a 2019 survey of more than 3,000 casual teachers, 79% of whom claimed to be part-time teachers, respondents earned between $3,000 and $3,500 per course, while nearly 2 3 percent of respondents earned less than $50,000 a year, which was not enough to support a family of four. Part-time faculty often do not have health insurance and social security, and lack job stability, and their contracts are signed once a semester. Many adjunct faculty are not informed that they have classes available until a few weeks before the semester begins. In times of economic crisis or the pandemic, part-time teachers are often the first to have their salaries cut or fired. In order to earn more money, many adjunct faculty members take more than six classes a semester and may have to travel back and forth between several universities each week, without enough time to prepare for classes or provide detailed feedback on assignments. In addition, adjunct faculty members are not respected by university administrations. Many of them don't have an office, let alone office hours.
The reason why there are many part-time teachers in American universities is that regular positions (including tenured faculty and non-tenured faculty positions such as postdoctoral fellows, researchers, and assistant professors) are better paid, and university funds are very limited (especially non-prestigious universities), which cannot give many people regular positions, but there are many university courses, and teachers in regular positions cannot be recruited, so a large number of part-time teachers are recruited at low salaries. In some faculties, the number of part-time faculty is 2-3 times higher than that of regular faculty: if there are 30 regular faculty, there are about 60 part-time faculty.
One might argue that part-time faculty members are "relegated" to the bottom of the university faculty and do not deserve sympathy for three reasons. (a) they are not eligible for regular positions because they are not among their peers; (b) their part-time teaching is voluntary, no one forces them to do so, and if they are not satisfied, they can leave at any time; (c) They are not deceived into going to the Ph.D., before the Ph.D., they can easily find out the employment status of the old Ph.D. (the employment status of each Ph.D. graduate in the past is provided on the ** of each department in the United States), and know that if they do not want to leave the university after the Ph.D., they are likely to have to work as part-time teachers.
In response to (a), Childis replied that part-time teachers are usually only responsible for entry-level courses, and that their professional training and knowledge are sufficient for entry-level courses: when teaching courses such as Introduction to Philosophy and Mathematics for Liberal Arts Students, part-time teachers are no worse than regular teachers. Of course, one might argue that entry-level courses aren't important, just "service courses" that allow students to meet credit requirements. But Childeis argues – and most readers will agree – that this view is wrong: introductory courses are important. For example, in the Department of Philosophy, whether the Introduction to Philosophy in the first year is taught by a teacher of analytic philosophy or by a teacher who opposes analytic philosophy will have a very different impact on students' academic interests. This is what psychologists call the "anchoring effect."
In relation to (b) and (c), Childis's response was that adjunct faculty did know about their employment prospects before they were PhDs, and that they were indeed "free to come and go", but that did not mean that they did not deserve sympathy. Why is it worth sympathy? Childris's reasoning seems to be that, firstly, the part-time faculty members did their first part-time job out of necessity, not completely voluntary, and even if the part-time faculty wanted to stay at the university themselves, it was partly the reason. Second, part-time teaching involves identity: these people see themselves as members of the academic higher education community, and if they leave the university for a different job, they cease to be themselves and become "someone else" in their own eyes. Therefore, leaving college is too costly for them. If a choice is too costly for someone, it is not a completely free choice for him. Finally, universities are in a strong position, while part-time faculty are a disadvantaged group. When universities offer part-time teaching positions to some people, they deepen their identity, give them unrealistic hopes (they feel that they will have a chance to become regulars in the future), but do not give them good treatment.
Childis believes that improving the treatment of adjunct faculty is not only about sympathizing and caring for the weak, but also about protecting the university's ecological environment: if the treatment of adjunct faculty is consistently poor, it will inevitably corrode the whole of higher education and make everyone harmed.
In the penultimate chapter of the book, Childis compares adjunct teachers to the pot-bellied herring that died in large numbers due to overbreeding in Lake Michigan in the '60s. It took a lot of time, money, and effort to restore the ecological balance of the local ** to re-establish the ecosystem of Lake Michigan, so that different fish species can develop in a balanced and healthy way. Childis called on universities to rebuild their educational and academic ecosystems to address the issue of the treatment of part-time teachers, preferably in positions that are relatively stable. This process takes a lot of time, money, and effort, but it's necessary.
While calling for improved treatment of part-time teachers, Childis also called on young people to refrain from romantic illusions and wishful thinking about the academic and higher education sectors. For example, before deciding to study for a PhD, find a reliable consultant to evaluate whether you are suitable for a PhD and give yourself an extra reference. After your PhD, consider a career outside of university and graduate school, such as going to the corporate world, ** sector, or starting your own business. Pursuing those professions may make your life better than working as a part-time lecturer.
Personally, I find the Chinese translation of this book to be best read by two kinds of people: (1) those who intend to go to the United States for a PhD and stay in the American academic community, and (2) the leadership of Chinese universities and the Ministry of Education. The former should be responsible for their own future, while the latter should be responsible for creating a good ecological environment for China's academic education. They all need to have a more comprehensive and in-depth objective understanding of the employment situation of doctoral students in the United States.
Finally, I would like to briefly mention a question faced by some Chinese liberal arts students who plan to study for a Ph.D.: do you want to study for a Ph.D. at a domestic university, or do you want to study for a Ph.D. abroad? This problem is a problem because these students plan to work in domestic universities after graduation (they do not want to work as part-time teachers in the United States) and believe that studying abroad at the expo will help improve their academic achievements, but developing in domestic universities (including publishing Chinese**, applying**, and promotion) requires deep connections that international students cannot have. If you don't plan to work in a domestic university, or believe that the liberal arts academic training in domestic universities is no worse than that in Europe and the United States, or believe that China can achieve about 80% fairness and justice for international students and local doctors, you will not be entangled in this problem. However, if there are many students struggling with this question, it is worth reflecting on China's liberal arts academic circles: how to make more students believe that they can receive very good academic training in liberal arts in domestic universities? How can more international students in liberal arts believe that they have an equal opportunity to serve the motherland with local doctors? A doctoral degree that lacks good academic training is the same as a doctoral degree that does not have an equal opportunity to serve the motherland, which is a "death of academic qualifications".
Author's DepartmentProfessor, Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University).