Letters to the Editor: The administrative bloat that forces colleges to rely on lower-paid faculty

To the editor: Your otherwise excellent editorial on the plight of contingent faculty failed to mention the primary reason why colleges and universities hire so many lower-paid adjuncts — to balance the budget at institutions with bloated administrations.

Administrative bloat is a pernicious disease that has infected colleges and universities for decades. Many now have more employees in administration than full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Administrative functions that were carried out by a dean or director with one or two clerical staff when I joined the Cal State Fullerton faculty in 1970 are now done by entire administrative divisions headed by vice presidents, associate vice presidents and assistant vice presidents, with their associated retinue of underlings.

To be sure, some increase in administrative staffing beyond that needed to deal with growing enrollment has been necessary. Schools have new requirements imposed on them by outside government agencies, and they must also keep up with the increased use of technology.

However, the growth in administration over the past several decades has far exceeded what’s needed to address those changes.

Mark Shapiro, Fullerton

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To the editor: Thank you for the editorial highlighting the problems found when universities rely on lower-paid adjunct professorial labor. In the 1990s, I taught part-time at UCLA, Cal State Long Beach and Occidental College, before the situation metastasized into the disaster we have now.

While that system was long recognized as terrible for adjuncts, I realized how bad it was for students when a history major asked me for a letter of recommendation after taking one of my classes.

I asked if he had someone in the department who knew him better and could write a stronger letter for him. He did not; he did not even know that he needed to build a relationship with regular faculty in order to get the support he needed. Adjuncts simply do not have the time or conditions required to provide the mentoring that students need for success.

Many adjuncts would welcome the security and income that come with full-time (ideally tenure-track) positions. Students and higher education in general would benefit if the ratio were shifted to 70% regular faculty rather than 70% adjuncts.

Kathleen Sheldon, Santa Monica

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To the editor: As a full-time, tenured college professor for more than four decades, I was always embarrassed by and felt guilty about the way in which schools exploited part-time adjunct professors who often have to teach at multiple institutions to make ends meet, if that.

Administrators and boards of directors could and should increase adjuncts’ salaries, but this only rarely happens.

There is another obvious solution: Administrators and full-time faculty could agree to contribute a percentage of their salaries to help compensate their hard-working, underpaid adjunct colleagues.

Dan Caldwell, Malibu