Last week, Paul Crenshaw got a phone call that faculty everywhere have nightmares about.
“‘Where were you?’” asked the voice on the other end. It was an official from a college in Kansas. Crenshaw never showed up to teach his first class of the term, and the college, not unreasonably, wanted to know why.
But Crenshaw had no idea he was supposed to be teaching a class. And apparently, it wasn’t the only one he was supposed to lead.
“Guys, this college where I adjuncted 1 class LAST FALL, gave me 3 classes without telling me,” he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “No email. No phone call. No contract.” The post went viral.
Crenshaw, an author who lives in Kansas, requested that the college not be named; he didn’t want to embarrass the institution and believes it was an honest error. He won’t be teaching the classes. But the anecdote resonated as a commentary on higher ed today and its increasing reliance on contingent faculty. Last fall, Crenshaw taught five classes at three different colleges.
It’s a familiar story: Tenured and tenure-track faculty are no longer a majority of professors. The contingent faculty who have replaced them don’t have the job security that comes with tenure, and they aren’t paid as well. Only a fifth of adjuncts surveyed in a report released last year by the American Federation of Teachers said they are able to cover their basic monthly expenses.
As colleges hire an increasing number of instructors who cycle in and out of employment, perhaps teaching one semester but not the next, it’s not impossible that accidents — like assigning a class to the wrong adjunct — could happen.
Crenshaw, who also taught for more than a decade at Elon University, spoke on Monday with The Chronicle about why he thinks his post resonated with other adjunct faculty. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me the full story. You’re just going about your day, and then you get this call out of the blue?
Yeah, I think I was actually writing and/or getting prepped for classes at a different university that I had already committed to. I just got a phone call and answered it. I can’t remember how they worded it, but they said, “Professor Crenshaw, you’re teaching a class.” And there was sort of a lift at the end of it, as if they weren’t sure whether they were asking a question or just making a statement.
And I said, “No, I’m not.” And they said, “You’re supposed to be” — again with that sort of question to it. I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t heard from anyone.”
I just assumed months ago that I didn’t get any classes, because I know that they usually want the fall schedule mostly done before the spring semester is over. I never heard from anyone. I actually was supposed to have classes that spring, and I think there was low enrollment, so the classes did not have enough students enrolled to be a viable class.
In the past, I’ve always gotten a follow-up email because the English department knows that they’re using multiple adjuncts, and those adjuncts are oftentimes working in several different places, or commuting, or all that. I guess someone just missed something this time, or a computer did an automatic rollover or something.
You said there were long periods of awkward silence on the call. Then you spent two hours digging through your email to make sure you hadn’t been notified about the classes.
It was almost like when you expect there to be another step, and there’s not another step, and you’re just sort of jolted. I hadn’t thought about teaching at that college because I hadn’t heard from them.
As adjuncts, our schedules are often wildly varied from semester to semester, or from term to term. You might do online classes, like some people do. You also might teach at different places. I’m constantly trying to keep things in my head: “OK, I go here on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.” You’re always compartmentalizing all of those things. I was just making sure that I hadn’t forgotten one of the compartments.
It’s the classic work nightmare for anyone in higher ed, don’t you think?
There was one retweet that said, “New nightmare just dropped.” There were lots of people saying this is like the student version of showing up to class unprepared. Everybody has the dream of you’re back in high school and you’re not wearing clothes. I think everybody has those sorts of fears.
Later, you said this experience is proof of how adjuncts can be treated worse than faculty on the tenure track. What do you think needs to change in higher ed to improve working conditions for adjuncts?
I’ve actually adjuncted most of my career. I was at one university for 14 years. I was full time most of the time. It was a one-year contract that I had to renew every year, but they treated me really well. I enjoyed all of my colleagues. And then after 14 years, one year I was only offered part time. I wondered why I would suddenly be going to part time, and they didn’t really have an answer. That actually ended up with me leaving the university.
The people that I meet, the other professors, the full-time faculty, they’re kind and they usually talk a nice game — we need to help adjuncts; we need to do this; we need to think about them — and that’s great. But I don’t see anything actually getting done unless we completely change the way we view education in this country.
What would you say to other adjuncts who read a post like yours and think twice about staying in higher ed?
The first answer that comes to mind is to go into a different field. There are people who love teaching, and that’s what they want to do. If that’s your passion, then go for it.
Try to become part of the English department; force your way into meetings; speak up; talk to people; be an advocate; find other advocates at the university. I rarely think that we should unionize nationwide — that’s a dirty word — but it needs to happen. Otherwise you have people driving to four different universities. There were people who responded on that thread talking about teaching seven or eight classes.
Know what you’re getting into. Know how difficult it is to get a tenure-track job. Educate yourself, at least, before putting all your stakes into the teaching field, because it’s difficult.
