The Adjunct Project
February 9th, 2012 § 8 Comments
So I’ve taken to calling this thing “The Adjunct Project.” As Lee Skallerup Bessette pointed out, it has gone about “as viral as you can go in academic circles.” It has been a wild couple of days, to say the least. I’ve had my eyes on the Google Doc about 14-18 hours a day every day. Pretty much any time I’m not standing in a classroom full of freshman or sleeping. I’m constantly backing up the data, and fixing the exuberant (and undoubtedly well-intentioned) “edits.” But hey, that’s part of it with collaboration. Totally worth it. I’m sure you’re wondering, so let me throw some numbers at you:
As of Thursday at 5PM→
- the Google doc has been viewed just under 12,000 times (in 3 days!)
- 529 schools have been added
- at any given time, between 30 and 60 people are actively collaborating on the doc
- traffic referrals: 6000 from Facebook, 800 from Twitter, 700 from Tumblr, 300 from Crooked Timber, 300 from The Chronicle, 100 from Inside HigherEd, and hundreds of other sources
- gained international attention (I have personally been contacted by professors in Canada, Australia, Spain, and England.)
- Publish the results publicly to a static webpage (and probably a dynamic one, as well).
- Continue collecting data.
- Work to create some kind of ranking system.
- Contact some of you for follow-up information.
- Work towards publishing the data somewhere. Any publishers want to throw some money at a book?
- Compare your school with others. Do your best to match up with similar schools (size, cost of living, 2-year/4-year,etc.)
- Connect with other adjuncts in your area. Get contact info from the doc and unite. We’re all in this together. I promise you no one will think it’s weird if you send them an email or tweet.
- Continue to tell anyone and everyone. Try to get in the news. I’m working on a pitch to NPR as I type this.
- For you tweeters, use the new hashtag #AdjunctProject.
- I also just added a new tab at the bottom of the doc for “Adjunct Supporters” for those who aren’t adjuncts, but would like to show support.
- Contact me if you want to send more information. I will read it all. I don’t care how long the message is, or how trivial it might seem. I want to know your specific situation.
*Notes:
1. Inevitably, some of your entries have accidentally been altered. Be sure to check back and correct any accidents.
2. Special thank you to Michael Bérubé, Sara Hebel of The Chronicle, and Lee Skallerup Bessette for helping propel The Adjunct Project into the limelight.
*****3. As of 2/10 at 6PM EST, I have locked Page 1 of the sheet. I’ve become overwhelmed with fixing the (intentional?) scrambling of the data. It’s easy to fix by reviewing the revision history and resetting it, but I am having to reset it every 30 minutes or so, and it’s driving me crazy to be honest. Never fear, though, I added a second page. Continue adding schools on Page 2. I’ll eventually combine ‘em all. If you need to make a correction to Page 1, just send me an email.
You are awesome! This website relieves some of the isolation some adjuncts feel…Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Lynne. I’m just glad it took off the way it did. Everyone was eager to connect with each other. Hopefully this will continue the push for more transparency in higher ed employment and administrative practices.
One more thing that’s probably worth mentioning for comparison here: The median university president salary is $427,400 — more than the president of the US! So if the outcome of the adjunct outcry turns out to be an influx of cash into the university system… guess who is likely to get that money! I’ll bet it won’t be the professors or the students. Because universities are also corporations, and their CEOs are paid a pretty penny. What exactly they are doing that is so helpful, however, is beyond me! Seems like the majority of the work is going to the professors — the ones without benefits, without competitive pay, and most of them — without even having offices!!! Whew, what a mess, America! When are you going to bail out the PhD’s and give your middle classes a break??
If you added a field for people to enter their zip code, it would be easier down the line to merge this data with census/cost of living data.
[...] The Adjunct Project is one of the most important outcomes of the recent US summit on precarity in higher education. Behind it is an impressively simple plan: invite academics who work without tenure to create a cloudsourced data collection project about their pay and conditions. [...]
[...] He’s been doing some great work for adjunct rights recently and has started something called The Adjunct Project that my teacher friends should look at. Check him out if you’re interested in writing, [...]
Glad to know about hashtag – I started using #TheAdjunctProject but had already trimmed it to #AdjunctProject to save letters. Interesting figures too. The project’s success boosts everyone blogging, tweeting, posting to lists, etc. If you added a column for President/Provost salaries, perhaps keen croudsourcers could fill it. Same for cost of living by location.
Thanks for getting involved! The latest at my institution is that it has come to light that one of my fellow adjuncts adjuncts is on food stamps in order to survive. …how sad is that?
go figure!