Karen Creighton drives from the Register Guard to her first delivery spot, an apartment complex in the Oakway area. Creighton is an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon. She takes a second job as a newspaper delivery woman to help make ends meet. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)
A dusty, teal 2000 Dodge Caravan idles outside Rustic Manor at 4 a.m. most mornings. Its owner, Karen Creighton, is darting around the Oakway area apartment complex, shuffling in properly comfortable shoes with her wavy blonde hair tied up tightly, lobbing rolled-up newspapers onto doorsteps. It may be difficult to peg her as a faculty member at the University of Oregon, or any large public university for that matter, seeing as she needs to pad her wallet by delivering papers for The Register-Guard. Creighton picked up the part-time gig because, as an adjunct instructor in the physical education department, she’s a stranger to pressed suits and the reserved parking spots often associated with teaching higher education.
Karen Creighton leans down to grab several stacks of the Register Guard’s newspaper. On some nights she delivers as many as 150 papers. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)
“On average, I’m teaching an aerobics class that has about 40 students paying $35 to $120, resident versus non-resident,” she explains. “I show up to teach 50 minutes, the students are paying anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000 per class session. The University pays me $35.” Creighton’s paper route every morning gets her about $600 a month on top of a third job as a fitness instructor at the Sheldon Community Center. Calculating office hours and class preparation, Creighton estimates she and many of her colleagues are paid roughly $12.50 an hour.
On a typical day, she works from 3 a.m. until 7 a.m. delivering papers, followed by a fitness class she teaches at the community center from 8-10 a.m. Depending on what day of the week it is, she’ll either work daycare there until 2 p.m. or teach at the UO from 4-6 p.m. Then it’s bed at 8 and the cycle begins again the following morning when she wakes up at 2:30 a.m. to pick up her newspapers.
Creighton’s route covers 10-15 miles every morning. It’s dark and warm today as she passes the time by giving herself Olympic-style ratings for accurate tosses. She fell into this work after her first daughter was born more than 20 years ago, summarily ending her studies for a master’s degree. But she’s been delivering papers ever since, and fortunately been able to maintain her work — and a healthy schedule of naps.
After dropping off a newspaper on the doorstep of one of the apartments along her route, Karen Creighton is silhouetted by the porch light. Creighton often times darts down dimly lit pathways and sidewalks throughout the night. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)
There has been a recent trend of universities nationwide scrounging for teaching faculty, not because there’s a drought of capable academics but rather to trim budgets. Potential professors reaching for the top shelves of their profession — money, research, tenure — find their spots outsourced to adjunct instructors. Adjunct faculty are often former professionals in search of a little extra money, who can teach a few classes a week while still working their main jobs or taking a break. They fall into a broad category of non-tenure track faculty that who, at the UO, simply do not conduct research but may be full-time instructors.
According to Pullias Center of Higher Education, in 1969 tenured professors comprised 78 percent of college teaching jobs in America. Today that number is nearly inversed in favor of non-tenure track professors, who are more favorable for their shorter contracts and lower pay. Some non-tenure track faculty can still be considered career instructors on longer contracts, but there are many who are on year-to-year contracts or, in some cases, term-to-term.
And because university salaries are determined by a department’s budget, which is in turn determined by the school’s stake in enrollment, some departments are more vulnerable to this reshuffling than others. The average salary for professors at the Lundquist School of Business is $150,600, and $132,000 at the law school. That’s double what the average Architecture and Allied Arts professor can expect. Non-tenured track faculty, more than 60 percent of the UO’s teaching staff, average $46,000 a year. The bottom rung is left for faculty who work less than half a “full-time equivalent,” which is set by each department separately.
In 2002, the University had 951 non-tenure track positions and has hired 352 since. In that same span, tenure track has gone from 165 to 200. Good for 37 percent and 21 percent respectively, and indefinite tenured positions have increased from 465 to 515. Thirty-nine percent of all faculty were tenured or tenure-track in 2002. Since then it’s slowly whittled down to 35 percent.
Barbara Altmann, vice provost for academic affairs, attributes the University’s increase in non-tenure track faculty to the boom in students since 2008, which saw enrollment spike from 19,000 to 25,000.
Bundles of the Register Guard’s newspapers sit on Karen Creighton’s dashboard as her car sits idly waiting for her return from a segment of her route. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)
“In order to handle that huge rise of students that we’ve experienced in the last five years, we’ve had to add adjuncts,” she said. “We have more non-tenure track faculty than is ideal. Now we’re at the point where we have to start righting that ratio a little bit.”
Many of those non-tenure instructors, like Creighton, resort to stacking part-time jobs. Mary Baxter, a 12-year adjunct with the geology department, scraped hours at Rennie’s Landing for cash and benefits.
“I’ve worked weekends there up until two years ago,” Baxter said, “and I wasn’t full-time either place so I couldn’t get health insurance, but (Rennie’s Landing’s owner) gave me health insurance.”
Non-tenure track faculty are everywhere on the UO campus. Though there are some exceptions, non-tenure track faculty do not conduct research for the University. Usually they are former professionals in their field, brought in by UO to teach practical skills while tenured profs and those on the tenure track conduct research and teach theories in the field.
“It’s just a different career path,” said Ron Bramhall, senior instructor at the business school. “I came into my profession from a more professional career track as a consultant and it worked well with what I teach. I elected not to pursue my Ph.D or conduct research.”
On the other hand, Creighton, who is putting two daughters through college, said she will try to continue working for the University because of the relationships she’s created here. “I love the students and I love my co-workers,” she said. “If it wasn’t for them, I might say this is for the birds.