At the bottom of the academic hierarchy

I always wanted to find out more about the US academic system, so this seemed a good book to read. Our protagonist, Sam, is a PhD from SHU, probably standing for Sacred Heart University – the author just uses acronyms right away without explaining. The novel has 2 key strands, the first all about the life of an adjunct lecturer. The second strand is the exploitation of Sam by her former PhD adviser, Tom. They are tangled together, not well, in this novel.

The story, set in Baltimore, begins at the start of the academic year for Sam. She has come for induction for new staff at Rosedale College. She introduces herself to the receptionist as

’Part time lecturer,’ I said.

‘No that’s not it’, she said, Oh yeah, like adjunct?’

The word sounded new in her mouth. Add-junk. I, too, had been unaware of the weird institutional hierarchies at her age. Adjunct, postdoc, visiting professor, assistant professor, associate, full – they all taught my classes, graded my papers. It was hard to fathom a salary range of less than $10,000 to more than $300,000” (p6).

Sam teaches several classes at both Rosedale and Lewis, the former a private college offering adjunct rates of $4,400 per class, the latter a public college, with adjunct rates of $3000 per class. What the novel makes clear from the start – and hammers home throughout – is that although Sam works extremely hard, and also has to spend her non-teaching, non-prep, non-grading time on applying for more jobs, plus revising her publications, she has a student loan to service, and no health insurance. She is chronically behind on rent, she cannot afford the medical treatments for her root canal and tooth replacement and crown that she needs, and she is even always hungry, not seeming to have enough in the budget even for sensible meals. The novel makes this sound a truly miserable existence.  

Talking to a friend who is a visiting professor, it sounds like most non-tenured staff have the same concerns. Gabe gets visiting lectureships of a year or two which means he has to change places constantly, and because he is prone to migraines, he has to change doctors constantly too. He also finds the migraines take a lot of time, which he cannot afford. “’I don’t think I’m ever going to get a tenure track job,’ he said.’” (p103). Gabe goes on to explain,

“Only twenty percent of faculty are tenure now. An escape from the adjunct trap is an escape from sub-minimum wage work, but it’s not an escape from exploitation. Even my ‘lucky’ friends tolerate a lot of shit until they get tenure review – heavy teaching loads, no research budget, tons of service” (p104).

While this seems common knowledge, Sam’s take is,

“It took me ten years to finish my PhD, it would be pretty ridiculous for me to just give up hope now I have research I want to do. I have classes. I want to teach. I have to believe there’s something better. I put all my eggs in this basket” (p161).

This is entirely typical of relatively new PhDs, who feel so invested in a system – academia – which they actually know is not invested in them, but which they either feel they need to keep pushing for since they already sacrificed much for it, or else, a system to which they desperately long to belong, at almost any cost.

Sam feels she lacks social capital, which she thinks spills over into her academic mobility and progress, and she may not be entirely wrong:

“Even now, more than a decade later, with a BA, an MA, a PhD, I was missing something essentially ‘academic,’ something tied to class that I couldn’t quite explain. I felt like an interloper, a step behind, watching what everyone else did, some more subtle version of Leonardo DiCaprio not knowing which utensil to use in Titanic’” (p130).

It is never clearly spelt out, but there does seem to be some old boys network functioning in academia, and not only in the USA. Sam says to Gabe,

’I’m starting to feel like, if you’re not anointed out of the gate, it’s a losing battle.’ I was referring to the grad students hired for positions straight out of, say, Princeton, emanating the emerald shine of possibility that we had already lost. ‘Like Tom – he got hired before he even published a book’” (p103).

She is referring to how there seem a few favoured graduates in each cohort, whose careers are promoted while others are left to either flail around on their own or just languish, or change career tracks altogether.

Sam has a friend who is a radical unionizer. Sophie says,

“Guess what, I have news, there are no real jobs anymore. I’s too late, we haven’t been chosen, we’re fucked. […] Every casual employee, every contract labourer, every postdoc and part time lecture knows…” (p161).

Sophie is broadening the discussion/problem beyond academia, to other casual contracts and the capitalist workplace in general. Sam however, seems to think persistence is the key, and although she puts a lot of time and effort into applying for more classes and academic positions, she does not seem to try for any other kinds of jobs or in any other industries – though she does interview for part time jobs, such as at Chipotle, to tie her over her shortage of funds while she is teaching adjunct classes.

The second strand of the novel is not as clearly articulated. It is set against the context of the #MeToo movement. Apparently Tom, Sam’s former PhD adviser, was a promising young lecturer who shot to fame on his first book, published at twenty-nine. Thereafter, he struggled to publish the next one. Tom’s marriage is struggling, and he enjoys the adulation of his students, whom he actively tries to charm. Sam is asked to  house sit for him on one occasion, and late at night, they exchange some less than appropriate text messages. Tom’s wife comes round the next day and orders Sam out, imagining that Tom has had an affair with his student, when in fact, Tom was having an affair with someone else. Sam is unaware of this, and at that time only knows that Tom advised her to change her PhD track from creative writing to reviewing, saying she may have talent, but lacks the instinct needed for creative writing.

Sam does not deny she had a crush on Tom, was flattered by his attention, and was always trying to impress him.

“I was always trying to strike some balance with him, to seem unfazed and older than I was while also being young and charming, a manic pixie dream student” (p188).

This is actually quite well written, depicting how a young female student in Sam’s position who wants to hold the interest of her older lecturer, needs to balance the charm of her youth and innocence, with the sophistication she imagines is needed to appeal to a more mature and sophisticated man.

However, as this novel tells it, this need not be a sexual interest. Sam begins to teach at Rosedale and finds that om has moved from SHU to teach there too. She is also in time for the release of Tom’s second book, published 20 years after his first best seller, which depicts a sexual element to the relationship between adviser and student, and in its framing, the student made a complaint, which meant the adviser’s career and marriage were compromised. Apparently, in the framing of the book, the adviser felt regret, which is in keeping with lessons learnt from the #MeToo movement.

At first Sam is baffled:

“Why would Tom want people to believe we’d slept together? What was the point? Couldn’t it only hurt him? How could all those smart people not question the framing, Tom as hero for admitting a flaw? Why did he get to be a ‘kid’ during the publication of his book at twenty-nine, and I, sitting in the Brew at twenty-two, did not?” (p212).

Sam’s questions are quite pertinent, pointing out the continued gender disparities between base line assumptions, not withstanding the progress made in the #MeToo movement. Apparently, unlikely though it sounds, Tom’s 2nd book is received almost uncritically. Sam’s voice and version of the story are never heard. And apparently almost no one asks to hear it.

The ending is very odd. Sam spirals downwards from having no money to pay rent, to sleeping on Sophie’s couch, having a quarrel with Sophie and ending up sleeping in her car, then he car gets stolen and she sleeps in her office in Rosedale, but gets thrown out of there because she has finished her teaching, and desperate in her homeless state, having run out of all family and friends and colleagues she can turn to, she turns to Tom, and while it is clear Sam is prepared to do anything including prostituting herself to him, it is not clear what she actually does…so there is no clear ending.

In the Acknowledgements, Adelmann writes of her partner’s experiences as an adjunct in Baltimore who had a health crisis and two major surgeries, was teaching five classes at three different colleges (much like Sam).

“Precarious and low-paid intellectual labor is becoming the norm. A 2022 American Federation of Teachers report on adjuncts and contingent faculty – which now make up 68 percent of college faculty – found that a quarter of those surveyed made less tan $25,000 a year; 38 percent relied on government assistance; and 75 percent had term-to-term contracts. Meanwhile, according to a 2024 report from the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college in the U.S. is over $38,000 per student per year” (p341).

Adelmann is right to bring attention to this plight of course. I doubt it is much better across the pond, except in UK there is the NHS for healthcare (although it should be noted, there are nowhere near enough dentists in the NHS, so even in UK, unless one has means for private dental treatment, much is going untreated.) The elephant in the room is of course the role of AI in higher education and academia, which was not touched upon in this novel, but which will also impact on adjuncts, probably adversely. It is mind boggling as to why so many continue to persist in being adjuncts when it is spelt out so clearly how exploitative and indeed miserable an existence it seems to be, all for the promise of tenure and everything tenure may or may not bring.  

Overall, an interesting topic – or two topics – but not particularly well written. Sam does not come across sympathetically, though she is clearly a rather pathetic character. She also seems curiously devoid of feelings – for e.g. how she offers sexual favours rather randomly, without herself enjoying them, or being clear what is being exchanged. It comes across as she is rather low in self-esteem. The writing contains an unsurprisingly number of rants, but they are worked in well enough into the book so as not to slow down the momentum of the plotline. There is no actual plotline – having sketched the framework of the trappings for the adjunct, Sam just goes from bad to worse, and there is no resolution. I am glad I read this book, but I do not feel motivated to seek out other writings by the same author.

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