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What if the adjuncts have to pay back their student debt?

Oh, this is starting to look pretty bubbilicious. A number of liberal artsy PhD types were telling me that they were just going to go into Income-Based Repayment (IBR) because, well, that would make it possible for them to take those low-paying jobs as adjuncts. Alas, all of the dreams of the college industrial complex are colliding in a terrible mess.

First, the dream of bolstering health care is forcing everyone to buy health care for employees that work 30 hours a week or more. The college industrial complex has always been good buddies with the medical industrial complex and so everyone I know around the schools thinks that more medical care is great. You might call it the doctor industrial complex.

Okay, but the rain falls on the just and the unjust. In this case, the schools also have to pay the huge bill for the medical care and so some schools are being clever. They’re redefining the adjunct job to be less than 30 hours a week. Whoo hoo.

Alas, this has consequences. Audrey Williams June at the Chronicle of Higher Edumacation informs us that — surprise– you can’t qualify for a fast payback under IBR if you work less than 30 hours a week for a non-profit. Ruh roh.

If the college industrial complex lets the adjuncts work more than 30 hours a week, they’ll have to pay health benefits. If they don’t, the adjuncts will be stuck with student loans forever.

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Related posts:

  1. Another way to stick it to the adjuncts: No Obama Care!
  2. Medical industrial complex piles on students too
  3. If education is so valuable, why don’t they pay the adjuncts more?
  4. Can colleges fight the urge to really stick it to the adjuncts?
  5. Let’s brainwash them about health care costs too

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This entry was written by admin and posted on January 28, 2013 at 11:23 am and filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

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2 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Most Ph.D. programs are set up so that students do not need student loans. Not only that, they get a small stipend. One reason that Masters programs and Bachelors programs are expensive is to cross-subsidize the Ph.D. programs. This isn’t really a tremendous gift to the Ph.D. students, as they earn these stipends through serving as teaching assistants, research assistants or lab assistants on an established professor research. These “Ph.D.-type” friends must have debt from their undergrad years. Not sure their work counts as public service for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but it will be many years before the completion stats are known. Past experience with loan forgiveness is that very few know try and/or complete the forgiveness, and, for the few who do, it is naturally many, many years after the legislation was enacted, making it nearly cost-free to the taxpayer — the main reason it is so popular with legislators, as opposed to direct cash support, which must be funded immediately.

    1. Craigie on January 29th, 2013 at 6:52 am

  2. I seriously doubt that there is anyone in the CIC who regards screwing students over on student loan debt as a problem.

    2. Walter Sobchak on January 29th, 2013 at 3:35 pm