One of our simplest truths is that our two-tiered institution enables a few of us to work extremely hard for the title of “professor” and a guarantee of lifetime employment at a livable salary, plus opportunities to follow our career bliss, feather our intellectual community, and other less measurable benefits, while it keeps many others of us – a majority now, nationwide – working extremely hard for as long as we can hold on, semester by semester or year by year, sometimes with the help of food stamps, to do some of the same work as the others.
To point out that this situation arises from job-market supply and demand, or that many adjuncts have tenured spouses or other careers or sources of income or health insurance and so don’t really need a fair or living wage, or that “real” professors have responsibilities besides teaching, or that now is not the time to address such matters … is to change the conversation from the central facts of inequity