Daniel Stuhlman wrote:

> Subject: Re: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education (fwd)
> 
> As  working librarian teaching what I did on the job was an advantage 
> that no full time academic could beat.  

This is something we investigated for the ALISE Recruitment Committee. Library experience is not really high on the list of qualifications expected of incoming PhD students (hence, of future LIS educators). It appears that it will fall, increasingly, upon adjuncts who are working practitioners, to convey that sense of reality....


> The down side is never knowing from one semester to the other what or if you are teaching.   

Changes need to be made, globally, to the way scheduling is done. Many schools wait till some "cutoff" enrollment level is met before finalizing the courses for a semester. That means neither the students nor the profs know until perhaps the week, or even the day, before classes start. Convincing administrators that a few "loss leaders" are necessary, especially if graduating students need particular courses, of if new ones need pre-requisites, is probably a tall order, given today's head-count-driven higher ed systems.... 

Part-time pay is for stand-up hours only. But the prep time and marking time and consulting with students is the same, whether you are p/t or f/t. On the surface, paying a quarter to a half of a full time salary, and no benefits, for the same observable outcome, might seem good sense. However, theorists like Vincent Mosco and Andrew Clement would probably call this "the Taylorization of intellectual work", or perhaps, "the electronic sweatshop". It is perhaps ironic that as we enter the "knowledge society" or the "Information economy", scholarship and knowledge themselves seem increasingly undervalued....

(It's not just happening in LIS. Journalists can probably spin you quite a yarn about it.)  


> I tried one school that a course I was teaching was obsolete, but they would not let me update it.  

Turf wars between regular and continuing ed? Or simply the consequence of the fact that full time academic life necessarily involves a certain detachment from the trenches?

> Since I taught on line I had to pay for my own space, overhead,  and computer.

However, you can probably get a tax write-off for the use of your home-office space, electricity, communications links, etc.

That said, there are benefits to adjunct work. Being out of the loop may be frustrating, but at least you're out of the politics too. (grin).


---
Christopher Brown-Syed PhD
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Editor, Library and Archival Security http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/01960075.asp

"If you are made a leader, do not magnify yourself, but among your men, be as one of them.'" -- Edmund, King of the East Angles (840-870).