Whipsaw Adjunctivitis

At the adjunct meeting at the local college, 70 or so adjuncts were present. Many middle aged failed academics coming back for one more round of exploitation, a few "younger" exploitees like myself. "I want to begin by thanking you for your work," the dean began, "because we know that you are not doing it for the money..." That got a few uneasy laughs. And so it went. Lists of restrictions and qualifications, concerns for making the learning experience rigorous and relevant and so on, much gladhanding and gratitude, and, at the end of the day, the distribution of work without economic reward, the allocation of loss upon the ranks of the overeducated.

But as I was looking over the huddled masses of adjuncts, I thought that it was really game over. The modern university, in order to survive, requires the exploitation of its teaching workforce. And, this workforce is rapidly approaching that cliff called diminishing marginal returns. The project of academia is overextended. Teachers--teachers not students-- taking net losses, going into debt, to be a part of the game, to be in the classroom. Inspiring for sure. Irrational for certain. Unsustainable without a doubt.

Joseph Tainter in his 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies defines social collapse as the sudden (in anthropological time, of course, i.e, 10-100 years) loss of social complexity. The loss of social complexity is precipitated by the diminishing marginal returns on the complexity of social personalities, the level of education, etc. When Rome became overextended in its provinces, the economics of a large centralized bureaucracy became impossible relative to the revenues coming in from the provinces. Likewise, it is not hard to imagine that the american university is rapidly approaching this phase of overextension. And, whats more, we are not even over the hurdle of peak oil and the rapid monetary inflation and unemployment that will ensue as a result. The entitlements of our suburban infrastructure include, of course, access to a rich panoply of universities and colleges. Can this continue?

I think so, however, I think that certain trends will continue to shape the nature of the educational product at the university and the college. First, the bulk of the educational shoppers will be looking for ever more relevant work training. This will mean increases in enrollment in the bureaucratic-technical fields like administration, nursing, etc. The effects of this will be a diminishing commitment to the humanities and the adornment of a "liberal" education. It will become, as it is already, an occasional course for the foolhardy.