Pros
Good support from colleagues; collaboration with colleagues great; high caliber students good to work with but they are in the minority. I enjoy the classes I teach because I care deeply about social justice.
Cons
Low pay and no benefits. When enrollment is under ten for a class, St. Ed's docks the adjunct instructor's pay. When the enrollment is even lower, the class is cancelled and the adjunct is let go, sometimes one or two days before the semester, though usually right after registration for the following semester. There is also a heavy workload for adjuncts. In order to make ends meet, we must take on at least three of the most work-intensive classes, leading to a lack of work-life balance. We put in more labor value into these classes than we get back, i.e., the pay is disproportionately lower to the work we put in. We also have to live pay check to pay check and if we don't teach over the summer, our money will dry up and we have to find alternate jobs. And there are no medical benefits for adjuncts. Adjuncts share offices which seems in violation of FERPA, which requires that faculty must hold private meetings with students to discuss grades and 504 accommodations. Not all SEU students should be enrolled in college. There is a lot of low performance among them. Finally, St. Ed's is spending money on a variety of construction projects as a public relations campaign, such as the Pavilion dormitory and the new gym.
