IN THE ADJUNCT UNDERCLASS, Herb Childress addresses a pressing issue of justice in higher education: the mistreatment of more than half the nation’s college instructors. Childress explores the making of adjuncts—contract workers (like rideshare drivers) who teach on a class-by-class basis, earning a fixed rate that is less than half what a “full-time” professor would make for the same work. Most receive no benefits and no assurance of future classes.
After a boom in college attendance 20 years ago and the foolish assumption that population growth and a robust economy were constants, the higher education system is scrambling to make up for greedy mistakes. The price for those mistakes is being paid by teachers, who should be concerned about educating students, not struggling for survival on subsistence wages. And so the real cost is to education itself.
The Adjunct Underclass is masterfully written and thorough, covering budgets, expansion, accreditation, hiring, and the ambivalence of tenured faculty. Adjuncts offer horror stories of scraping by while waiting on empty promises of an established position. These stories demand moral outrage.
Sadly, though, the book is a diagnosis, not a prescription. Childress offers no steps to wean universities off these vices, but instead says he wants a systemic overhaul, with schools articulating and standing by their educational mission. It’s a pleasant, unrealistic dream.
Recently, I heard the president of a Christian university speak to faculty and staff; it echoed what I’ve heard at many Christian colleges. First, congratulating the university for its nobility in educating and spiritually forming students. Then speaking of woes over financial burdens, cast in light of the extra load they bear as Christians. Then the reminder that everyone should be proud of sacrifices they make to be the city on a hill. The president noted their distinct advertising: We attract students, he said, by offering a quality Christian education, not contemporary campus gimmicks. Minutes later, a sketch of the university’s next big expense was revealed: a sleek dormitory with top-notch amenities and a rooftop patio.
Childress doesn’t address religious schools specifically, but I squirm at how on point the book is for the Christian schools I’ve known. The hypocrisy of universities—assured of their own righteousness and yet participating in this injustice—seems painfully obvious. Yet almost all use the adjunct system.
Most universities’ great fear is that they’ll have to close their doors. The stakes are larger for those who attach themselves to the name of Jesus. When Christian colleges pride themselves on a higher mission than the typical American university, they must accept the responsibility of that promise. Sadly, most Christian colleges do what they should fear—betray the God on their pamphlets for a convenient injustice, and worse, claim by their actions that Jesus would do the same.
Whitney Rio-Ross has a master's in religion and literature from Yale Divinity School. She teaches as an adjunct in Nashville, Tenn.
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