In an effort to bring attention to part-timers’ struggles, he found surprising support.
University of Georgia freshman comp instructor Josh Boldt is an adjunct professor – part of a growing population of part-time instructors who don’t receive the pay, benefits or prestige of their full-time and tenured counterparts.
Boldt wanted to bring more attention to the working conditions of the average adjunct prof, and created a public Google document to collect data on other teachers’ pay and benefits.
The response was surprising. He’d been expecting a few dozen – and got more than 1,500.
The goal of the crowdsourcing effort – now called The Adjunct Project – is to promote transparency in higher education employment, and identify schools that set the standard for adjunct best practices.
But critics point out a potential flaw in gathering data through crowdsourcing: People who respond to a self-reported survey might have a stake in the outcomes and attempt to skew the data.
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