Dear Editor:
There’s currently a bill before the NJ state senate that would give health care benefits to adjunct professors. The way the system is set up now, colleges and universities hire only a tiny number of full-time professors, who earn a decent salary plus health care. The bulk of teaching, however, is done by an army of low-paid adjunct professors (myself included) who typically must work at several institutions to eke out a meager living, and who receive no health benefits. Sad to say, but this is how colleges make their money.
By comparison, New York City takes much better care of their professors. Adjunct professors in the CUNY system (City University of New York) make 56 percent more money than at NJ colleges, in addition to receiving health care benefits after teaching three consecutive semesters. One reason the New York politicians signed this generous contract is that the union for adjuncts there is more organized, savvy and vocal than the unions in Jersey. Also crucial was the role progressive organizations like the Village Independent Democrats — a political club in downtown Manhattan that just elected me to their executive board — played in promoting this important legislation.
So please Senator Kenny and Assemblyman Sires, for the sake of quality education in our state, I urge you to support this bill to alleviate the horrible exploitation of adjunct professors. I know from personal experience how difficult it is to provide quality instruction to students when you’re schlepping between three different places to earn a bare-survival living. You wind up feeling alienated and on the margins, without time to nurture the kind of relationships with students and colleagues that make for effective teaching and learning. In the end, it’s the students who wind up suffering from poorer quality instruction by underpaid, exhausted teachers.
I’d also like to hear public statements from Governor Jim McGreevey, Congressman Bob Menendez and Senator Jon Corzine, to see where they stand on this important and historic bill. Perhaps their moral support could nudge us closer to a more humane, caring and productive system of higher education in New Jersey. Or, at the very least, catch us up with the progress being made at New York’s colleges.
John Bredin