Think and Adapt
Helen Ruggieri

It grieves me to hear about the fall of e-businesses and corporate downsizing but not much. I'm a victim of educational downsizing and have been for years so I may provide a scenario of what is to come for middle managers thrown into the world of unemployable deadbeats. You will work a 3 to 11 shift, just enough hours to stay under the full-time requirements.
You will work hard, but when there is an opening for a manager, one will be brought in from outside. The new manager will still have bad skin. He will be a graduate of Peoria Business College. If you ask why, you will be told this young man has majored in business management and you are overqualified.

MM will look for other jobs, but the competition is fierce. If a job opening appears, there will be a minimum of 300 applicants, all downsized middle managers. MM won't even get an interview. After all, he's close to fifty, over the hill. He will manage his accounts, but that's where he'll stay. Welcome, downsized business folks, welcome. Now you will learn what humanities graduates have long been accustomed to ­ being dead wood. But, perhaps my story will inspire you.

I graduated in 1972. There were 111.000 graduates in education that year and 23,000 openings. We were bombing Hanoi. McGovern was campaigning. There were 2,556 colleges with a total enrollment of 8,498.117. None of them needed a writing teacher. It's difficult when your profession disappears as you step up to enter it.

I go to the employment office and sign aboard. Retraining? I don't see myself as an air conditioning repair person. The counselor points out that I'm overeducated. I drop degrees. I land an office job. I file. I file everything. but, it's just a temporary position, which is to say, I work 8 to 5 like everybody else, but I don't get paid for holidays, vacations or sick days. I get no health insurance, no retirement benefits.
I get a better job. I run back up on a hospital computer system. I go in at midnight Friday and shut the system down, put it through the paces. I get fifty cents an hour extra for working the graveyard shift and in two days I can work anywhere from 16 to 30 hours. Not bad. My week is free to job hunt.

And it pays off! I get a job teaching at a local community college ­ the job of my dreams. I teach one course at night from 7 to 9:45. I get paid per credit hour which is quite a bit less than I make at the hospital, but a least, I tell myself, I'm using that very expensive education I worked so hard for. I liked teaching. I liked the night school crew, adults working low paying, dead-end jobs, wanting a break. I identified with them.

I picked up another college and worked both places. I thought that this would put me on the inside track. I worked both colleges teaching four or six sections a semester. I was making enough to survive, but not enough to rise about poverty level. And with all the work, I had to drop the hospital job.
I was a professional, I told myself. A professional adjunct! A teacher, but not quite. If filing makes you dull and the might shift makes you prone to talk to yourself out loud, adjuncting too has its disabling psychological aura. You are expendable. You never know what the next semester will bring. If there's a cut to be made, you are the place to cut. If there's a class to be dropped or a schedule changed, it's yours.

If I thought that adjuncting would put me in line for a full time position, I was mistaken. It removed me from serious consideration, because if I was an adjunct, I wasn't good enough to be hired full time, obviously. I was ok for temporary duty, but unsuitable for a full time position when one might advertise in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" and get replies for 200 or so PhDs with better degrees from better colleges. And besides, who would teach all the 8 o'clock classes, the late night courses and so cost effectively if you were to leave.

Welcome to the downsized world of the university. They keep tuition low by using adjuncts ­ mostly women with terminal degrees to teach the worst courses (composition) at the worst times (eight a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday). Adjuncts are cost effect. At colleges in my area the going rate is between $1500 and $1800 per three credit course). Four part timers covering four classes would cost a lot less than one full timer at $30,000+ or ­ including benefits. Any accountant can figure the bottom line. And in the late 1990's in New York State according to "Composition Chronicle," colleges staff 20 to 60 per cent of developmental and entry level courses with part-timers. And this has probably only gotten worse in the last several years.

The teaching profession itself is concerned about the adjunct phenomena. The National Council of Teachers of English and the American Association of Community Colleges et al put out policy statements recommending things like giving adjuncts mail boxes and secretarial help. They admonish administrations to maintain an appropriate ratio between full-time and part-time faculty, but don't mention what the "appropriate ratio" should be.
The university isn't a sweat shop. We aren't locked in, but our labor allows them not to hire full ­time teachers necessary to cover classes. The most humane departments balance their budget on the backs of the semi-employed. Of course, they deny that. We don't want to exploit you, they say in their most reasonable take it or leave it tone. Oh, of course not, I whimper, I'm grateful to be here.

And perhaps I am considering that 20 per cent of college graduates will never be employed in a job that requires them to work at a college graduate level. I can't leave. There's no where to go. I can't retire. I have nothing to retire from or on. Exploit me, I beg, do.
Downsizing? We've been doing it in the world of education for years. In the sixties colleges expanded graduate programs to get cheap labor (graduate students) to teach introductory courses. When we graduated, they told us ­ get out in the real world. Businesses need liberal arts graduates who can think and adapt.

Then colleges discovered they could hire us as adjuncts, available to teach what was left on a "we'll call ya" basis. We might even be grateful for the opportunity to practice our profession. I'm one of the class of 72 ­ first to be downsized. For us there were no buyout packages. There were no early retirement incentives. Welcome, middle managers: think, adapt. Business departments, now occupying the position education departments did in the late sixties, might take you on. You'll help keep tuition affordable and swell the ranks of adjuncts to be. And, consider the options.