Adventures in Academia - A Quarter Century as an Adjunct Economics Instructor

November 24, 2009

Turning on my computer and logging into HubPages the other morning I was greeted with an notice that I had three requests from other Hubbers. 

Two of the requests came from the same person and the third from another Hubber, both of whom have joined HubPages very recently.

While I generally choose my own topics for HubPages, I have found it challenging and beneficial to undertake the periodic challenge of writing a Hub on a topic assigned by someone else as it forces me to think outside the box.

The answer to TONYKIARIE's question, Which topics in Economics do you Instruct?, the answer is Introduction to Microeconomics and Introduction to Macroeconomics. I teach these two, sophomore level courses, as an adjunct (part-time) instructor at a local community college.

Since I also work full time for the same college managing a vocational training program for people seeking careers in the office field, I limit my teaching to one course per semester. As a result, I alternate between these two courses teaching just one of them each semester and summer.

Micro and Macro are the two most popular economics courses, mainly because they are required courses for students majoring in other fields at our institution and at the local university where many of our students continue on for their bachelors degree.

As an adjunct, I teach the courses assigned to me and these are the two most frequently taught by adjuncts. There is an advantage to teaching these two courses as there are minimum class size requirements and when a class doesn't meet the minimum enrollment, it is cancelled and the instructor not used that semester.

In the past I have also taught an introduction to economics class that gives a broad overview covering both micro and macro economics

Microeconomics, of course, deals with the small picture as the word micro means small. Microeconomics is concerned with the decision making processes used by the basic units of economics which are individual households and businesses.

The concept of supply and demand are basic concepts that show how price influences people's decisions when making purchases or deciding whether or not to produce.

The demand curve is drawn (or slopes) downward and to the right and illustrates the fact that, certeris paribus or, other things being equal, as the price of a product is reduced more of that product is demanded by consumers. There are some simple explainations that make this true and, since we are all consumers, we can look at how we decide to buy or not to buy something to see how this works.

- First, people's incomes are not equal and there are fewer rich people than average income and poor people so as the price rises fewer people can afford to purchase the item in question. Conversely, as the price is decreased more people can afford it.

- Second, the higher the price, the less a person can afford to buy. If a person has $7 in their pocket and a pair of socks costs $7 that person only has enough money to purchase one pair. However, if the price is reduced to $1 then the person can purchase seven pairs, one for each day of the week, with the $7 in their pocket.

- Third, the more a person spends on one item, the less that person has to spend on other items. So, if I can afford to budget $20 for entertainment on the weekend and the price of a ticket to a movie I want to see is $10, I can purchase the ticket and still have $10 left to spend at the refreshment stand. However, if the price of the ticket is reduced to $5, I can afford to purchase two tickets and bring my wife while still having $10 to spend on popcorn and soda for myself.

In the case of supply, the supply curve is drawn in the opposite direction, in this case it is drawn (or slopes) upward and to the right. This illustrates the fact that as the price of a good or service increases more businesses are willing to produce the product.

The easiest way to see this is to again look at ourselves. Now our society has most people convinced that society is divided into two sets of two groups - consumers and businesses, and workers and businesses. However, in reality, each of us are both consumers and businesses as each of us buys goods and services and each of us either produces and sells a product or service or sells our talent and time in exchange for helping someone else produce and sell a product.

When deciding whether or not to invest the time and effort into any type of work we have to take into account two basic things:

- First, what other things we could do with the time we will be giving up to work, either for ourselves or others, in the production of a good or service.

- Second, the costs involved in agreeing to work. For instance, if a person decides to work for themselves from home there are usually tools and equipment to be purchased, the raw materials to make the product, as well as the fact that they have to give up part of their living space to make room for workspace. Instead, if a person decides to work for someone else there are travel costs to get to work (gasoline is not free), as well as other costs.

When my sons were younger and I was a single father teaching in a traditional classroom I used to do an exercise with my students to illustrate this point. I would explain that I would have to go home after class and and make dinner for my two sons and me and then explain that I would be making the boy's favorite meal - macaroni and cheese the making of which involved boiling water, pouring in the macaroni, cooking it then adding some milk, margarine and the contents of the powdered cheese packet and mixing it together.

I then offered to not only let a student share the meal with us but would pay them fifty cents as well - a simple ten mile drive to my home, twenty minutes to make the dinner and set the table all for fifty cents and a free meal. I never had any takers.

I then doubled the price to a dollar and still no takers. Then to $5 and no takers. At $25 I usually got a few brave souls to raise their hands. And at $1,000 every arm in the class was straight up. Of course I then made clear that this was just an intellectual exercise and not a real offer.

While microeconomics studies the individual units of consumption and production, macroeconomics is concerned with the study of the economy as a whole.  This is more abstract and is concerned with things like trying to measure the output of the nation, studying ways of regulating the economy by means of laws and regulations as well as taxation and spending policies in an effort to achieve certain national economic goals.  
While I understand and teach both my preference is for microeconomics as it is more scientific and less subject to political influence.

The interaction with students is fun and challenging, and it has been interesting observing the change in students over the years.

When I first started teaching I noticed that most of my students were poor writers and would complain that I was too demanding when I would give an article from the Wall Street Journal as an assignment. They reacted as if I had assigned something from an advanced academic journal.

When I mentioned this to my department chair he explained that even though the class was considered to be second year college level, the textbook was written at the tenth grade high school level, which was the reading level of most high school graduates at that time, while my Wall Street Journal articles were written at a twelfth grade reading level.

I continued to push writing and continued to assign articles from the Wall Street Journal and the Economist magazine from England. I stressed to them that, in an information society, writing would become increasingly important as contact with clients, customers and even supervisors would increasingly rely on the written word and the quality of their writing would often play a major role in how these people viewed them. This certainly proved true for me, and my future students, as I later moved into online education where all contact with most students is now via email.

While I still require writing in my courses, and even provide a link to Robins Grammar Guide, the quality of student work has improved considerably. The college itself has not only begun to stress writing more but has been encouraging instructors in all disciplines to include writing in the courses they teach.

Also, the cutbacks in the Federal Student Loan and Pell Grant programs have made it costlier to attend college and students have responded by working harder and demanding more, in terms of quality, from instructors.

Then, of course there is the fact that increasing numbers of new students have been educated in charter schools, church run schools and home schooled rather than the traditional public schools and, in my experience, these students have performed better on average than the students who I had when I first started teaching.

All through school from my earliest years through graduate school I always had instructors who believed in teaching and not indoctrination. Some very scrupulously kept their personal views to themselves while others openly presented their political views in class. But all of them not only respected the students' right to their own views but encouraged them, as well as challenged them, to explore and develop their own philosophy.

In fact one of my most memorable teachers in graduate school was not only an avowed socialist but had once actually run for Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the Socialist ticket (he lost despite the fact that Milwaukee had had previous Socialist mayors).

Despite my own strong free market, small government views, I have always tried to present both sides equally and encourage students to do the same. I am frequently able to keep students in the dark as to my actual views although in some classroom classes, especially macroeconomics which is often political, I have found a need to state my position for the record but still encourage students to think for themselves.

When I first started teaching, the textbooks (as an adjunct I have never had any say in the textbook, I simply teach out of what is given to me), especially in the macroeconomics portions, tended to stress the liberal Keynesian theory and portray the so called mixed economy (in which government plays a big role) as the ideal. So I took it upon myself to assign and discuss articles giving the free market view and encouraging the students to look at both sides.
In recent years, the books have shifted more towards the free market view.

In fact the book I am currently using actually mentions Ludwig von Mises and Frederick Hayek in a footnote. John Maynard Keynes is now barely mentioned and this has forced me to do an about face and search for big government material to introduce to the students.

One other change in students is that they are not only more open to different ideas but are willing to express them without worrying about whether or not I will agree with them. I, of course, encourage this but in the past many students were hesitant to answer something with political connotations and tried to find out where I stood before answering.

One of the nice things about being an economics instructor is that economics instructors are releatively scarce and, as such, I have campuses coming to me asking me to teach rather than having to visit them seeking a position.
After a couple of years of teaching in the classroom another campus approached me to teach one of their telecourses.  I was doing freelance work and the time and welcomed the opportunity to teach an additional course and make more money.  
Instead of the students coming to the college and sitting in a classroom we beemed the class into their living room via cable TV or video tape if they didn't have cable.  The college had been in the TV business for a long time and had a large library of courses.  About half consisted of professors  having their lecture taped as they spoke into a camera in an empty studio and the other half consisted of material purchaced from commercial outlets.  My course was the later being the 1970's PBS (Public Broadcasting Corporation) series Economics USA, an excellent, if somewhat slanted, series that consisted of an economist first explaining a concept and then showing the concept in action in the real world.  It was great - interesting, educational and very entertaining.
My job was to prepare the assignments and tests.  The assignments were mailed by the college to the students and the tests administered in the college test center.  I would then grade and return the assignments and tests as well as return phone calls to answer any specific questions a student had left on a voice mail I was given.  While I missed the face to face interaction with the students, I also had more control of my time as I was no longer required to be in a classroom at a specific time.  The total time commitment was about the same except that I had considerable latitude as to where (usually at home, but I often corrected papers on my lunch hour) and when I worked.  Also, a good portion of the work was done up front in preparing for the class as everything had to be ready to give to the students at once, no preparing one day for the next day's class.  
One drawback to this was that all the prep work was done beforehand but I wouldn't get paid unless the class filled and I taught it so there was a bit of a gamble.
Initially the college photocopied and mailed all the assignments.  Then I convinced them to let me distribute the material electronically.  I set up a blog where I posted all the assignments which the students copied, completed and emailed back to me.  I saved the college a considerable amount of money in paper, copying and mailing costs as well as saving myself some work.  This was also how I got into blogging.

Taped tele-courses were not the only means of television distribution used by the college.  The college had a contract to offer classes in Nogales, Arizona which is located sixty some miles south of Tucson on the Mexican border.  Since it was expensive to send a teacher down there they offered a number of classes via interactive TV.  
Just before class started one semester, the instructor for the interactive TV economics course accepted a job in another state and quit.  I was asked to fill in.
I had five students in Tucson and about 18 in Nogales.  We had two studios at the Tucson location, a regular large one and the Green Room.  A Green Room is generally the room in a TV studio where guests sit while waiting to be called for their segment on a live TV show.  I guess we used the Green Room for this as well, but not having that many shows with guests, it was also used for small broadcasts.  
In a classroom I was used to walking around and writing on the chalkboard.  Here, it was like being a David Letterman or a news anchor as I sat at a desk with PC next to me with a tablet connected to the PC.  My five students were seated immediately in front of me. Behind the students and sitting slightly above their heads  was a TV monitor displaying the classroom in Nogales and above that TV was a remote controlled camera aimed at me.  Behind me was a large electronic display which displayed what I wrote on the tablet or brought up on the PC.  A cameraman in the control room down the hall controlled the camera on me as well as the one behind me that was aimed at the students in front of me as well as the transmission of the contents of the display screen.
In Nogales we had two cameramen in the room with the students.
Of course when you are speaking in public, eye contact is important and on TV eye contact with the audience is made via the camera.  In my case I had to divide my eye contact between the students in front of me who were at eye level, the camera that was about three-quarters of the way up the wall opposite me as well as periodically glancing at my notes or using the PC or tablet display.
I made a point of watching David Letterman and some similar shows for ideas on how to use this medium effectively as well as frequently borrowing the video tape of the class (FCC - Federal Communication Commisson - rules require that all live shows be captured on tape and the tape saved for a certain period of time) to view and critique my performance at home.  I actually became quite good on TV and would have liked to have continued except that it was a late afternoon class and i was now working full time and had had to make a special arrangement with my supervisor to temporarily change my work schedule to teach this class.

A while after my experience with interactive TV, I was asked by another campus to teach a self-paced class at their location. This involved providing the students with all their materials at the begining of the course and then holding office hours one night a week where the students could come and meet with me if they wanted. I also used the office time to correct papers when there were no students as well as to use the computer to write some of my HubPage articles, which I was now doing, during nights when there were no students (which was most nights) and nothing to correct.

This was a particularly busy time for me as I had just gotten married and my wife, being from abroad, had not yet received her green card and couldn't work. Since she had two children and I had two children our family size had doubled and money was tight. So, in addition to my full time position at the college working in training, I was teaching a regular class one night a week, teaching a telecourse, and spending another evening with the third course. But the extra money not only came in handy but I noticed it was also driving up the projected payout for the pension I will get when I retire as the college has an old style defined benefit play which pays based upon the highest year's income rather than the amount contributed.

I was already using the Internet for my telecourse so began using it for this course as well much to the delight of the students who like the ease of using the blog and email and the campus which like the cost savings.

After about two years of this the college had its online program well developed and they dropped the tele-courses which relieved me of that course. Another reorganization of classes resulted in the classroom course I was teaching being eliminated as more things went online. It was at this point that I moved over to teaching regular online classes and moved off the ad hoc system I had set up. Changes in labor regulations or the college's interpretation of them also resulted in a new rule limiting full time employees of the college to teaching just one course as an adjunct.

The timing was perfect here as I was not only getting tired, but I had moved to a better paying position within the college in my day job, my wife was now working and my HubPages income was growing. So I gladly stepped back and settled into teaching just one online class per semester along with one in the summer.