Adjunct Professor With Awful Commute Creates Community

More than half of all professors at American colleges and universities today are adjuncts. They’re the largely part-time educators excluded from the benefits, pay and privileges granted to full-time faculty.

Their numbers have dramatically increased in recent decades, but numbers don’t translate into clout. Many are struggling to attain union recognition – or any recognition at all – of their hard work, low pay and often ghastly commutes.

Dushko Petrovich is one of those adjuncts trying to give voice to this growing workforce. He’s an extreme commuter, regularly crossing between four states. He teaches at Boston University, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design and New York University. He shares his story with Here’s & Now‘s Eric Westervelt and how it inspired him to create a community through the publication Adjunct Commuter Weekly.

• “Road Work”: A recent New Yorker feature on Dushko Petrovich
• Dushko Petrovich’s letter to his readers

Guest

• Dushko Petrovich, adjunct professor at Boston University, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, and New York University. He is also editor of Adjunct Commuter Weekly. He tweets @DushkoP.

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