Adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee face a strict wage cap (it can't fairly be called a salary cap). It's possible to teach a 5-5 load there, and still not make more than $20,000 a year (no health insurance included). Setting aside the well-chewed question of why anyone would even consider working under such conditions--let's focus on what happened when UT's adjuncts presented a reasoned, researched, politely framed appeal for that maximum cap to be relaxed. Adjuncts spent two years meeting with administrators to make sure they shaped the request just right--and then UT's board said no. And I'm just left thinking--I guess those board members must really like unions, because they are doing all they can to push the folks who do all the heavy pedagogical lifting in UT's six-university, thirteen-community-college system in that direction.

The other option is that the board secretly wants to use the economic crunch to reform the tenure system. Here's how I see this: we've been reading a lot about schools laying off non-tenure-track faculty members now that the economic downturn is pressing on college and university budgets. That leaves fewer teachers for the same number of students--and those teachers are, by definition, the ones on the tenure track. At schools where tenured and tenure-track faculty teach light loads (sometimes as little as 2 courses per semester), this means that classes are either going to have to get HUGE, or that faculty members will have to teach more of them. Or maybe it means both. Maybe a reader with better actuarial instincts than I can help me out on this one.

But my main thought is this: there are entire faculties that really should be teaching much more than they do, and paring down the contingent faculty members to save money is going to make them do it. And while there may well be problems with that in some corners of the university, there are other corners where it might actually effect a needed corrective. English professors, for example, should never ever ever get to glide through on 2-2 loads while grad students and adjuncts carry the tougher, and ultimately more important, college writing courses that most lit professors won't touch with a ten-foot pole. The single most important thing an English professor can do is teach English--that is far more important than sitting around massaging a slim obscure monograph for years at a time, or filling up one's days dutifully doing committee-based make-work, or racing around the coffee-date/networking/conference junket.

The above may look like a bit of a digression. But not really. Inside Higher Ed records the stories of some of UT's adjuncts. And lo! The very first one is that of an adjunct who teaches college writing and reading:

Consider Chandra G. Elkins, who teaches composition and developmental reading at Tennessee Tech University and Nashville State Technical Community College. She typically teaches a 5-5 course load and tries to pick up a summer course or two as well. Last year, teaching ten courses over the course of a year, she earned $15,210. This year, she is hoping to earn more, so she has added a sixth course for next semester, which she will teach at Motlow State Community College.

"It's really depressing. I have to really, really love my job," she said. "Literally, I could quit my job and get a job at the local Wal-Mart full time and make more money and have benefits."

Andrew William Smith, an English instructor at Tennessee Tech and president of his university's AAUP chapter, organized the effort to change the pay policy. While the adjuncts wanted to propose minimum pay levels, they were encouraged by the Board of Regents officials not to do so. So in what Smith called a "very modest, little baby proposal," the AAUP asked to have the maximums raised, so that the lowest level would have a maximum pay of $850 per credit hour, compared to $550 per credit hour now. Other maximums would have gone to $900, $950, and $1,000 per credit (from $600, $650, and $700 now).

Smith noted that nothing in the proposal would have required the colleges to pay any more than they are now--all the adjuncts wanted was the possibility of higher maximum levels. The hope was that with these maximums, colleges would see the benefit of paying a little more so that adjuncts wouldn't feel the pressure to teach more courses than they can effectively handle, he said. "We were looking for a humane solution to a very bad situation."

While this is much less than many adjuncts feel they need, "We tried to work in the system," Smith said. "Give us bread now. We'll worry about roses later." While Smith is now in a permanent position, when he was an adjunct he was on federal Food Stamps and used the state's health care service for people without money to afford insurance.

The chairman of UT's board acknowledges that adjuncts are "critical" and that they are "clearly not" well paid. But he says UT just doesn't have the money to pay them more. Doing so would mean the university would have to offer fewer courses and serve fewer students. He's not willing to do that.

I keep coming back to the thought that the objective here--whether conscious or not--is to drive adjuncts out, and to move the staffing problem onto the shoulders of tenured faculty. And at UT, anyway, there just isn't much wiggle room there: a quick web search suggests that while some tenured and tenure-track professors at various UT campuses have light 2-2 teaching loads, others already teach up to four courses per term.