FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 20, 2015

We are pleased to introduce PrecariCorps, an independent nonprofit organization offering much needed financial, emotional, and professional support for adjunct college faculty. Once we are officially granted full 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, we will be able to provide temporary, welcome relief from the economic, emotional, and physiological stressors that all too often define adjuncts’ lives by matching donations to those in need. As a nonprofit, we will also be able to receive tax-deductible donations from individuals and organizations interested in supporting adjunct and other non-tenure track faculty, who comprise the majority of the American professoriate.

PrecariCorps Founders and Contact Information

Managing Director: Brianne Bolin

Communications Director: Joseph Fruscione

Creative Director: Kat Jacobsen

Website: https://precaricorps.org/

Twitter: @PrecariCorps

Email: info@precaricorps.org

The shift in college labor practices for the past 40 years shows a troubling preference for hiring contingent, non-tenure track faculty, as well as a concomitant steep rise in non-faculty professional positions. With up to 75% of the American professoriate in non-tenure track positions (some with contracts lasting only one semester), higher education is at a crisis point for faculty and students. The real-world result of this hiring practice has been an increase in the academic precariat—insecure, unsupported, and economically unsustainable positions for those who hold them—and a related privileging of financial priorities over educational ones. In addition to harming adjunct professors’ financial and emotional well being, such strained working conditions also harm student learning conditions. When adjuncts are effectively forced to work multiple part-time jobs to make a living, they have less time, energy, and institutional support to devote to their students.

PrecariCorps will have four fundamental purposes, and we are currently designing programs to support each one:

1. To improve the lives and livelihoods of contingent faculty undergoing financial hardship by providing charitable assistance to them in the form of cash assistance or grants;
2. To create and distribute educational media to the public (including parents, students, and college communities) that details how colleges function in the post-recession U.S. economy;
3. To create and design a searchable archive for contingent faculty issues in the news;
4. To conduct research on contingent faculty and their role in the economy of U.S. higher education to encourage a broader public understanding of how administrations budget their financial resources as well as what effects these budgetary practices have on faculty populations, student populations, and the general value of higher education.

PrecariCorps will eventually provide necessary financial and professional support for adjunct and other non-tenure track professors, as well as enable full-time faculty, administrators, professional organizations, alumni, and other interested parties to make tax-deductible donations to those in need. Since most adjunct professors are paid poverty-level wages (about $2,700/course on average) and receive no benefits or institutional support, PrecariCorps will fill a great need for the majority of U.S. college faculty, their students, and their campus communities.

For all media inquiries, contact Joseph Fruscione, Communications Director: proff74@gmail.com or joe@precaricorps.org.

PrecariCorps.org  •  @PrecariCorps  •  info@precaricorps.org

For our press release in PDF format, click here.