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Promoting Quality Higher Education– An Investment in Oregon’s Future

HIGHER ED FACULTY

The Guardian: Are adjunct professors the fast-food workers of the academic world?

January 29, 2014 / Phil Lesch

Are adjunct professors the fast-food workers of the academic world?

Adjuncts are over-worked, underpaid and have little job security. It's an injustice, and it hurts higher education
The Guardian |James Hoff | 1/24/14

I am what's called an adjunct. I teach four courses per semester at two different colleges, and I am paid just $24,000 a year and receive no health or pension benefits. Recently, I was profiled in the New York Times as the face of adjunct exploitation, and though I was initially happy to share my story because I care about the issue, the profile has its limits. Rather than use my situation to explain the systemic problem of academic labor, the article personalized – even romanticized – my situation as little more than the deferred dream of a struggling PhD with a penchant for poetry.
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