Reflection Paper #1
The text that was most impactful for me was Kellie Bancalari’s “Free speech on campus? Not for adjunct faculty, it seems,” on USA Today. Bancalari’s article talks about free speech on campus and how the one group that has to be the most careful about what they say is adjunct professors. Adjunct professors are professors that work part-time and do not have tenure nor are they on track for tenure. She wrote that if adjunct professors say anything controversial or “incendiary” they could lose their jobs, as it has happened many times before. This includes voicing their opinion anywhere on social media or in public. Bancalari then listed a number of adjunct professors that have recently been fired for voicing their opinions. …show more content…
This thirty-five-minute documentary shows all the issues concerning the lives of adjunct professors. It talks about how these professors are forced to work multiple jobs to support their families and themselves, often driving to many colleges or universities in one day, hence the term freeway fliers. Even after taking in many jobs some professors still don’t make enough money, because they’re paid very poorly, and have to sign up for public assistance, or forced to live in their cars or in the streets. They also don’t receive benefits, or sometimes receive very few benefits, and many of them live without any sort of medical care. In order to save money these universities take on many part-time professors rather than having full-time professors, sometimes up to 75% of the professors and faculty are adjunct. These universities sometimes don’t even pay these professors for their office hours. As tuition prices go up, the salaries of these adjunct professors go down, and it leaves them wondering where all the money is going. One of the adjunct professors in the documentary says how these universities not only cheat them off of money, but it also cheats the students of their money and education. The documentary also mentions how the biggest problem with the issue is that these professors aren’t talked about; many people don’t know about the situation of these adjunct professors, they’re kept a …show more content…
What is happening to them is unfair and they deserve to be awarded for their work. It not only stops them from teaching at their fullest, but it stops us from getting the best education. When these adjunct professors can’t voice their opinion, because they risk getting fired, it affects their students and the education of these students. Students can’t be challenged and they can’t have confidence in their professors if the professors can’t say what they want or if they seem repressed and too frightened to ever say anything. When these adjunct professors are paid very low wages it also limits the education of the students because many times the adjunct professors aren’t paid enough to have office hours and/or have no time because of another job. It is imperative that we help these adjunct professors and faculty because they’re the giving us the education we need to have stable jobs when they barely have stable jobs of their own. We also risk becoming them, if students want to go into teaching, or it might just stop students from choosing that
The text that was most impactful for me was Kellie Bancalari’s “Free speech on campus? Not for adjunct faculty, it seems,” on USA Today. Bancalari’s article talks about free speech on campus and how the one group that has to be the most careful about what they say is adjunct professors. Adjunct professors are professors that work part-time and do not have tenure nor are they on track for tenure. She wrote that if adjunct professors say anything controversial or “incendiary” they could lose their jobs, as it has happened many times before. This includes voicing their opinion anywhere on social media or in public. Bancalari then listed a number of adjunct professors that have recently been fired for voicing their opinions. …show more content…
This thirty-five-minute documentary shows all the issues concerning the lives of adjunct professors. It talks about how these professors are forced to work multiple jobs to support their families and themselves, often driving to many colleges or universities in one day, hence the term freeway fliers. Even after taking in many jobs some professors still don’t make enough money, because they’re paid very poorly, and have to sign up for public assistance, or forced to live in their cars or in the streets. They also don’t receive benefits, or sometimes receive very few benefits, and many of them live without any sort of medical care. In order to save money these universities take on many part-time professors rather than having full-time professors, sometimes up to 75% of the professors and faculty are adjunct. These universities sometimes don’t even pay these professors for their office hours. As tuition prices go up, the salaries of these adjunct professors go down, and it leaves them wondering where all the money is going. One of the adjunct professors in the documentary says how these universities not only cheat them off of money, but it also cheats the students of their money and education. The documentary also mentions how the biggest problem with the issue is that these professors aren’t talked about; many people don’t know about the situation of these adjunct professors, they’re kept a …show more content…
What is happening to them is unfair and they deserve to be awarded for their work. It not only stops them from teaching at their fullest, but it stops us from getting the best education. When these adjunct professors can’t voice their opinion, because they risk getting fired, it affects their students and the education of these students. Students can’t be challenged and they can’t have confidence in their professors if the professors can’t say what they want or if they seem repressed and too frightened to ever say anything. When these adjunct professors are paid very low wages it also limits the education of the students because many times the adjunct professors aren’t paid enough to have office hours and/or have no time because of another job. It is imperative that we help these adjunct professors and faculty because they’re the giving us the education we need to have stable jobs when they barely have stable jobs of their own. We also risk becoming them, if students want to go into teaching, or it might just stop students from choosing that