The Hallowed Halls
I am once again sitting here in the hallway of a building on the campus of the University of San Diego, where I am an adjunct professor in the graduate business program. When I was at Cornell’s graduate business school for ten years, I was not alone as an adjunct professor, but it was not like here. I do not know, nor do I plan to investigate the exact balance between full-time faculty and part-time faculty, but I do get the distinct sense that we are far more in the majority than was the case at Cornell. That may have to do with geography or it may have to do with academic standards, or perhaps no more than happenstance. Whatever the reasons, I tend to think of it as a good thing for the students. I think many practitioners think they would like to teach and have a good deal to give. But then they encounter the rigors or teaching, and especially the rigors of teaching the same material several years in a row (schools love consistency). In any case, I believe there are many for whom the bloom goes off the teaching rose after a course or two and therefore it is always wise to have a stable of new adjuncts at the ready to fill in. I am certain that as with most modern businesses, the trend is towards more gig workers for numerous reasons, but mostly flexibility and cost. I am also certain that those are governing factors here in that it would be hard to deny that they must, by necessity, enter the thinking of academic administrators who are struggling in the new age to provide first rate educations at affordable prices.
Higher education has gotten a largely well-deserved rap as one of the arenas of American life where the cost has vastly exceeded the base inflation rate. Some of this is surely due to an over-abundance of supply combined with some uneconomic constraints on demand. If we had truly open borders and people from anywhere could go to school anywhere, I think it is fair to say that there would be no shortage of demand for American higher education as a whole. But that not being the case, there are more schools trying to compete for fewer American warm bodies. There are some visa tricks that keep schools looking more American rather than global (read that to get interpreted as selling themselves to the highest foreign bidder). Despite the recent admissions scandals involving wealthy celebrities buying their children’s way into certain high-profile schools, the rising cost of higher education has become a national disgrace of sorts with everything from the fairness of admission to the commercial value of a degree (using NPV analysis of earnings differentials versus tuition costs) being thrown into question. Why are costs so high? Judging by what they pay us adjuncts, it certainly can’t be the salary cost of educators. It may have more to do with administrative costs and the various apparatus needed to teach in the modern world.
I the classroom I am waiting to occupy (there is another class in that room right before my class), there was not a lot spent on furnishing the room. At Cornell we had very nice (and I’m sure expensive) tiered amphitheater tables and articulated swivel chairs. This also limited the density of the classroom to a very manageable level. USD has basic tables and chairs on a flat floor. Where Cornell had a fully wired podium cum teaching platform with all the IT bells and whistles and centralized controllers, USD has invested (probably thanks to COVID) in decent remote audio-visual equipment with multiple cameras, centralized controls and the full suite of online tools from Zoom to Blackboard, to name the two I mostly use. That way, when I walk into class, I simply log into my USD account and go to my course materials to download the day’s lecture PowerPoint and then hook up the Zoom. And off we go. While the IT is close to state of the art, it isn’t excessive so I presume it doesn’t break the bank. I’m sure the big nut is in the buildings and grounds, which are really spectacular on this campus as they were (in a very different East versus West way) at Cornell.
And, like Cornell, I’m sure if we analyzed the space utilization for classrooms, commons areas, faculty offices and staff offices, it would be a toss-up as to which asset was least productively deployed. It was a running joke at Cornell that faculty offices were one of the great wasting assets of all time as faculty probably spent at most 20 hours per week in them. And that was before the Pandemic. It wouldn’t shock me to learn that that had dropped to 5-10 hours per week with COVID and is only just now starting to rise again. As an adjunct, I don’t even have an office (though I could probably arrange something similar if I desperately needed one). I don’t have any University tech equipment (I use my own), and I haven’t even asked for any pencils or paper.
This frugality extends itself to my course reading requirements. I place on Blackboard all the reading material they need and it doesn’t cost anyone a dime. I am careful not to abuse any copywrite restrictions by never copying and supplying more than 10% of work in question. Furthermore, while I do suggest that anyone wanting a text can buy a kindle version I recommend. I generally see no reason to further encumber the learning process with costly aides when the public domain is rife with materials there for the asking. Education need not be done in a costly manner. In fact, I would be just as happy to still be teaching via Zoom and further reduce the overhead of classroom costs, but the school is quite adamant that their business model involves face-to-face learning, which is the premium product offering in their view.
I have lined up a dozen guest speakers this semester, nine of whom are participating via Zoom. It so happens that two that are coming in person will be the next two weeks and the last one right before Thanksgiving. My entire teaching experience this semester consists of driving to campus against Rush Hour traffic, parking in the underground garage directly beneath the building, a mere handful of steps from the elevator, going up to the floor where my classroom is located, waiting in the hall on a small ottoman, using another ottoman as a makeshift desk, using the men’s room. Teaching my class for three hours, going down to my car (gotta catch the elevator before they shut down at 10pm) and driving back home.
I’m not sure why I like doing it, but it makes me feel engaged and relevant (there’s that word again). I know the students appreciate it. I actually think my guest speakers like sharing their wisdom and experience. My Department Chair seems to appreciate that I slotted in to teach this course when he needed someone. I don’t know if my teaching makes the world a better place, but when I look at my various other activities these days, there is little that I can point to that is more meaningful than the preparation and teaching I do each week. I suspect I will only feel more so next semester when instead of Advanced Corporate Finance, I will be teaching Ethics, Law and Policy. I hope to feel more like I’m making the world a better place with that course. Ultimately, I do consider the halls of academia to be hallowed halls. I may have left the ivy-covered walls behind and now teach in the tile-roofed stucco halls of the Spanish heritage of the West, but the process of passing on knowledge has always and will always be a sacred trust among humans. We do it because its the only way to advance the species…even if the species sometimes seems unclear exactly where it is heading next.