My article aims to expose something annoying that many teachers experience in the United States academic system and that, I would risk saying, also spreads to other parts of the world: the distance between the value that institutions say they give to teaching and the employment treatment they offer to those who teach.
After studying a musical instrument, film composition and, later, classical composition and music theory for decades; After navigating through multiple academic institutions and obtaining the highest academic degree, a doctorate, we entered the job market with the hope of finding a position that would ensure us a decent and stable salary.
Once the dissertation has been completed and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music has been obtained, a new stage begins. We have shown that we can research, create and teach. Then comes the second part: finding a job. And there we discovered that the excellence that was demanded of us is not necessarily enough to achieve stability.
We all dream of having a full-time job, dedicating ourselves to teaching at a single institution, and developing an academic career without having to rebuild our calendar each semester. We aspire to medical benefits, a decent retirement and access to resources that often depend on the type of contract. After so many years of preparation, is it too much to ask?
Reality can be shocking. Although I consider myself a blessed person for many reasons, I can’t stop seeing in myself and my colleagues the constant struggle to maintain the “active contract” every semester. We are part-time teachers, even when the sum of our duties takes up much more than a full day.
This is where one of the great inconsistencies of this matrix begins: work can fill your entire life, but the contract is still partial.
It is a shame that so many institutions turn to highly qualified professors without offering them a real prospect of stability. Hiring by class allows you to cover teaching needs without assuming all the commitments of a full-time position. This results in a professional with decades of training and the highest academic certification, available to teach a single subject and waiting to be called back.
Of course, if you get hired, you still hope that “someday” a full-time position will appear. That “someday” can last for years or never come. Meanwhile, the teacher accumulates experience, fulfills his obligations and continues waiting. The institution receives your work; he receives a chance and a salary.
After ten years working in an institution, having taught at up to ten universities and colleges from the United States and having been a finalist for several full-time positions, it is difficult for me to ignore a contradiction: I see administrative positions with continuity and benefits while those of us who are in front of the students remain subject to the uncertainty of the next semester.
I also see a bureaucracy whose necessity deserves discussion. How many positions are needed to administer an institution that cannot find a way to provide stability to its teachers? Why does the budget seem to be enough to support certain offices, high salaries, but becomes insufficient when it comes to hiring those who teach the classes?
The question is simple: how necessary is a teacher for society?
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Schopenhauer as an educator: “Your educators can only be your liberators”, in Spanish translation. The phrase recognizes in the teacher someone capable of helping us think and discover our own possibilities. What a contradiction that those who have that responsibility must exercise it without knowing if they will keep their classes next semester.
Having a good teacher, with years of academic and professional experience, should be a strong endorsement for any institution. However, many of us part-time teachers are among the most vulnerable workers in this system. To teach a profession requires years of study, sacrifice and practice that, in the end, do not guarantee a stable position.
We are asked for commitment, availability and excellence. We are evaluated with overwhelming rigor. We also have the right to ask for conditions that allow us to sustain that commitment.
The scarcity of opportunities makes competition sometimes fierce. I also don’t believe that merit always decides the result. Internal relationships, affinities and the support of someone inside can weigh more than what is publicly recognized. When that happens, the discourse of academic excellence loses credibility. What is the point of proclaiming merit if the applicant suspects that the door already had an owner before the call was opened?
That is why I recommend to my colleagues that they never neglect their professional activity outside the academy. There are many cobwebs and intricate paths that do not always lead to the light. Having achieved a master’s degree and a doctorate should not force us to abandon the skills, projects and independence that we built before obtaining it.
This employment inequality explains why many professors work in multiple universities at the same time. They offer us a class and we accept it; then another one appears in a different institution. This is how we build an income between schedules, roads and obligations that rarely coincide. We teach in several places because just one does not offer us enough work to live on.
It is difficult to get out of that level. We are always hanging by a thread that sometimes gets too tight. A reduction in tuition, a change in schedule, or an assignment decision can suddenly alter the income we were counting on. And our accounts don’t wait until next semester.
Income diversification is one of the best tools we have. Betting your entire life on an academic job without stability is betting on emptiness. To my colleagues who also live in this world of teaching I say: do not forget the skills acquired before arriving in a classroom. Continue composing, performing, researching, producing and developing your own projects. Those capabilities can help them survive the ups and downs they encounter.
But knowing how to survive should not become the excuse for nothing to change. Just because a professor manages to support himself by working in several institutions does not mean that the system is working well. It means that that teacher is making a huge effort to compensate for what their contracts do not offer.
I hope institutions review their priorities, eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic positions and allocate more resources to full-time teaching positions. Without teachers and students, none of this industry would exist. It is worth remembering this when deciding who deserves stability and who should continue waiting.
The academy must respond for the contradiction between what it preaches and what it practices. If it requires years of preparation, experience and commitment, you have to explain why so many of your teachers continue to live from semester to semester, a shame.
For a better future, yes. But that future needs decisions, budget and places. We teachers have already put in the years of study and work. Now it is up to the institutions to put more than just words.
