Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers and the Global Academic Proletariat (Adjunct Labour in Higher Education)

Once adjunct teaching was considered a temporary solution to faculty shortages in institutions of higher education. Now it is a permanent and indispensable feature of such institutions, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. This book takes stock of this new development, concentrating primarily on the situation in the humanities. It looks at its impact on the lives of the highly-educated scholars and teachers from many parts of the world; scholars waking up to the sobering fact that higher education presents them with a two-tiered labour market in which they themselves are permanently barred from moving up to the higher tier. To them, being an adjunct teacher means experiencing frustration and humiliation. All essays in this book offer personal accounts of adjuncts’ experiences together with critical reflections on institutional conditions and suggestions for their improvement. In turn defiant, poignant, analytical, exasperated, and sardonic, these essays are always incisive and revealing. Their inside view—a view from below—shows higher education as a world different from how it appears to tenured professors and university administrators, different from that presented in most college brochures. For all those who care about the current state and the future of higher education—no matter if they are teachers, scholars, students, parents, or administrators—this book will offer valuable insights into the working world of academic teaching.