Axia and Adjuncts

About a week ago, Inside Higher Education ran an eye-opening article titled "Breadth of Adjunct Use and Abuse." The article summarized the findings of a new report, which broke new ground by including graduate student teachers in their totals of part-time instructors. One of the most surprising findings, in my estimation, was that full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty comprised only 41 percent of instructional staff at public research institutions. The study also showed that part-time faculty at community colleges and public four-year colleges earn an average of $2,500 for each course they teach.

I think the report should have included private for-profit colleges in their analysis. These institutions have seen their student enrollment rise nearly ten fold in the last quarter century. I recently went through the application process for Axia College to gain some insight into how their instructors are treated. This college, in case you haven't heard, is an entirely online institution that employs 20,000 instructors and enrolls 100,000 students. What I found will probably shock you. Before Axia College will hire you, they require that you spend about 80 hours in unpaid training on their web site. If you pass the training and are hired, you will be paid $1,200 per course. Instructors have no control over the content of their courses; the texts are pre-selected and they cannot deviate from the curriculum. After three years, instructors are eligible to start earning $1,500 per course. And after ten years, instructors can earn a whopping $1,700 per course. At no point are instructors paid more if they receive good teaching evaluations; seniority and conformity are what apparently yield instructors pay raises.

I am not sure if it is possible for a college to treat instructors with less respect. There are no office facilities at Axia and very little benefits. It seems like instructors are incredibly expendable. In fact, the only reason why Axia does not hire online instructors from Asia (who can communicate reasonably well in written English and would presumably work for even less money) is probably because accrediting agencies would revoke the college's status and Axia would lose its lucrative access to federal student loans. I really have to wonder if there is any end to this kind of corporatization of higher education. If case you are wondering about the rest of the story, Axia told me via email that that I would probably be a good fit for two of their history courses, interviewed me by phone for 45 minutes, and then wrote back that they would not need me because of their "current course needs." My best guess is that I scared them off.