The Patina of Respectability

Let's face it: For a number of years people working in low-level professional or semiprofessional positions have had to find ways to supplement their meager salaries. Their ranks include junior clerks and sales associates, paralegal employees, entry-level managers, and even adjunct professors that are effectively part-time. In response to this, the part-time employees have to resort to other jobs to fill in the pay and benefits gap.

Most often these are mundane jobs that bring a bit more money in. While it's really nice to obtain another part-time job that one qualifies for, pays well, and hopefully brings benefits, that doesn't always happen. Hence, the math teacher/barista or the history teacher/nightclub bouncer! As long as the position is not too unrespectable they can function as a member of the lumpenprofessoriat!

But what if a dean or department chair finds a part-time instructor in his/her other setting? Usually, the tendency is to not recognize the person as one of his/hers; but remember with the mercenary idea that the person has another job, so is likely to stick around for a long time and need not have to be offered a full-time position of one becomes available.

As for those who work part-time with the idea that they might be hired on a full-time basis, do they still believe in the Easter Bunny? Or: "Why buy the cow if the milk is cheap?"*

I think that reasonable employers should recognize that, when they find a part-time person engaged in work that is incongruent with the role or status of the part-time position that they offered, they are part of the problem. Let's face it: part-time academic salaries are not enough to be one's sole means of support! Where's the money coming from?

I know of one part-time instructor who showed and sold houses part-time; and she graduated into a full-time realtor! As she put it, "I didn't take a vow of poverty!"

As for another, she became a member of a roller derby team and could really body check others!  That's definitely preparation for being an administrator someday.

*Deans are sometimes capable of crass analogies.