Chapter One

The plight of adjunct (part-time) and temporary (nontenured) faculty has been well documented, particularly by contingent faculty themselves. The experience of Ben Satterfield, a former adjunct, is typical. While teaching at the University of Texas, Satterfield recalls that though they "were not shunned like pariahs, the temporary faculty were distinctly second-class citizens, tolerated but not encouraged" (1994, 130). When he moved from UT to Austin Community College, Satterfield's situation became even worse. He received even less respect from administrators and colleagues and was paid 60 percent less than full-time faculty for teaching the same courses: "Dozens of us shared one small office, occupying desks like shift workers; we were hired on a semester-to-semester basis and denied medical insurance coverage or any benefits that were standard for the regular faculty; we were disdained by the administration and treated like field workers with no rights whatever" (132).

The comparison of adjuncts with field workers-dislocated seasonal laborers who can be easily replaced-has been especially prevalent in English studies. As Cary Nelson and Michael Berube (1994) point out: "Tenure-track jobs in English regularly receive 800 to 1,000 applications. Even the most accomplished young scholars and teachers often remain unemployed. For in the 1990's, many colleges are finding that they lack the money even to replace retiring faculty members, and graduate programs that had expected boom times suddenly find that they are drastically overproducing Ph.D.'s."

Linda Ray Pratt, chair of an A