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  3. The Rise of Adujncts A．Academia is often thought of as an occup

The Rise of Adujncts A．Academia is often thought of as an occup

游客2024-01-09  13
问题                 The Rise of Adujncts
A．Academia is often thought of as an occupation with immense job security. The traditional image is one of a middle-aged professor with his own once, his own car park, and a cozy job with a middle-class salary that remains unaffected by upturns and downturns in the ’real’ business economy. But in the United States today only a minority of professors have anything resembling this lifestyle. For the vast majority, the actual conditions of their employment are very different. They scrape by with low pay, short-term contracts and few or no employee benefits. Many even qualify for food stamps. This shift in employment conditions has far-reaching consequences not only for academics, but also for students and the quality of education they receive, and for academic freedom more generally.
    B．Originally, almost all professors were in full-time positions and employed under a system known as ’life tenure’. Tenure all but guarantees professors a well-paid job until retirement; their position can only be terminated with ’just cause’. Proving just cause is a lengthy, difficult process that happens rarely—only around 50 of 280,000 tenured professors lose their status every year. The purpose of tenure is to provide shelter for researchers who dissent from dominant opinions, disagree with the authorities of universities, donors or political authorities, or choose to research topics that may have social importance but seem unimportant or unnecessary to others. In this way it seeks to keep intellectual pursuits ’pure’ rather than at the whim of external interests. Without tenure, professors might prefer uncontroversial research on popular topics, and draw dishonest conclusions in a bid to please authorities and keep their jobs.
    C．In an era of perpetual cost-cutting and budget-tightening, however, guaranteeing large numbers of academics lifetime employment with related benefits is increasing untenable. The proportion of university teachers with tenure has slid from 75 percent in 1960 to just 27 percent today. Rising in their place are ’professor adjuncts’. Adjuncts are temporary, part-time employees who were initially brought in only occasionally as special guest lecturers or to provide cover for tenured professors on parental or research leave. Adjuncts teach individual classes and have no research or administrative responsibilities, and their contracts typically run for a single semester, after which they might be renewed. Over the last few decades their use has been extended beyond these temporary exigencies, and adjuncts have become a permanent, institutionalized aspect of academic employment.
    D．This has created several problems for adjunct professors, who are considered by some to make up a growing ’academic underclass’. Firstly, because contracts are always temporary, adjuncts rarely qualify for insurance and health benefits, such as time off with remuneration for illness, in the same way as tenured professors. Secondly, recompense for adjuncts is often very low. In order to make a living from their work, adjuncts typically need to win contracts with multiple universities. As a consequence of this high teaching workload—and the lack of paid research opportunities—adjuncts tend to find it hard to publish articles and win research grants, therefore making promotion increasingly  unlikely  with  every  year  that  passes (academic promotion is governed by what is known as a ’publish or perish’ culture).
    E．The culture of using adjuncts also has flow-on effects for the quality of teaching that students receive. Because adjuncts come in only for classes, they do not have offices or office hours on campus, and usually do not have the time to meet up with students in small groups or for one-on-one sessions. The disengagement between students and teachers can make it difficult for struggling students to find guidance outside of lectures. Adjuncts are also less ’ tied’ to the universities they teach at and fail to accumulate reputations over time in the same way as full-time professors. As such, they are not as personally invested in the quality and outcome of their teaching. Finally, it has been reported that many adjuncts practice grade inflation—raising grades higher than deserved—in order to maintain their job security by keeping students pleased. These outcomes are not because adjuncts are malfeasant or incompetent professors, but rather because of the structural pressures this type of work involves—precisely what the tenure system sought to overcome.
    F．The rising use of adjunct professors also has implications for the research and pedagogical autonomy of teachers. Because adjuncts do not have tenure, they can be fired with the simplest of explanations. Furthermore, administrators who do not want to give any reason at all can choose to simply not renew an adjunct’s contract after the semester finishes. As such, there is immense pressure on adjuncts to teach in ways that please those who employ them. While only 50 tenured professors lose their jobs in the USA every year, reports emerge every day about adjuncts who have been fired or not had contracts renewed after disputes with faculty or administrators over course design, teaching, or employment issues. As the pool of growing numbers of adjuncts compete desperately for the shrinking amount of tenure-track positions, intellectual conformity can grow as candidates position themselves as safe, mainstream choices. As theoretical physicist Lee Smiling has written, "...it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field of string theory..."
    The rising use of adjunct professors is mainly rooted in a need for cost efficiency in education, but it has more diffuse effects on the wellbeing of academic professionals and students, the quality of the education they receive, and academic freedom in general. Everyone who is concerned about more than the fiscal ’bottom line’ needs to follow this trend carefully.
Reading Passage 2 has six sections A-F.
    Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
    Write the correct number i-ix in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
    i    Uncertain future for academic freedom
    ii   Low pay causes problems
    iii  Tough life, worse prospects
    iv   A safety net for intellectual risk-takers
    v    The necessity for economic reform
    vi   Educational standards decline
    vii  Adverse effects on health of adjuncts
    viii Academic life: perception versus reality
    ix   Exploitation of a stop-gap system [br] What was the motivation behind the tenure system?
选项 A、To allow professors to pursue their research without outside influence.
B、To prevent academic positions from being used for research that is not useful.
C、To discipline professors who make claims that are not true.
D、To provide professors with a secure income so that they can focus on research.
答案 A
解析
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