Adjunct instructors waste of students' time, money

It's early on a Wednesday morning, and to both my right and left there are scores of uninterested Augustana students staring blankly at an adjunct instructor stumbling through his lecture.

They—we—are awake, but not alert. We are present, but only in the most basic of senses. We are retarding our way back to academic infancy, stoned by the most pointless harangue I have ever heard in my life.

I'm sure Augustana's adjunct instructors are good people. I'm sure that in their respective professional realms they are highly valued. But just because you're a nice, talented person does not make you a good teacher.

We've all seen the college's billboards that say, ''Professors so great, you'll fight for front row seats,'' and I suppose this is true. There are a great many professors at Augustana who are truly illuminated minds, but right now, my spot in the back of the classroom is an ideal place for me to lean my head against and make a conscious effort to simply stay conscious.

The only illumination in this class comes from students pulling their cell phones out of their pockets every four minutes to see how much time is left before they can get up and leave.

For the past 20 minutes, this particular adjunct has been reading out of a book that apparently has something to do with class discussion, though I have yet to see any evidence of it.

I've been taking this read-aloud-story time to do some number crunching, and if I'm going to be wasting time in that class, I might as well figure out how much it costs for me to do so:

For the 2009-10 academic school year, the comprehensive cost of an Augustana education was $23,276. Cut that in half and that comes out to $11,638 per semester.

Figure that most students take, say, 15 credits per semester, and that's $775.87 per credit. This being a three-credit class, it's costing me $2,327.61 for the course. Looking at my class syllabus, I notice that we have 35 class periods this semester, and that means I'm paying Augustana $66.50 for every hour I sit in this class, listening to this adjunct talk about his lofty work as a professional outside the college's walls, and watching him not understand why his class learns the material so slowly.

Now, before you say, ''Well, you just don't have any interest in the class, and you simply have no desire for this type of learning,'' understand that this class is part of my major. I'm supposed to like this stuff! I tried to like this stuff. I gave this guy an honest shot at teaching me something, and he went and swilled it away by not inspiring a single soul in that class to care about a single word he's got to say.

By now, he's reached the point of the lecture when he asks questions that are so painfully obvious that they are in danger of becoming insulting. The class watches in disbelief. Watching him wait for an answer, stranded at the front of the room, is excruciating. It is burning and silent and completely awkward. I feel pity for this sullen man.

I can recall my early days at Augustana, following admissions reps around campus, guiding me through the Back Alley and Elmen Center, talking about how Augustana prides itself on having professors, you know, professors, teaching the courses. The tour guides had the speech laid out about how challenging the professors were at Augustana and how important that was for our budding minds, how this was the place for me.

But this: this is torture. I'm sure the top brass suckered this poor guy into teaching a 100-level class, making him work for pennies on the dollar, and I feel bad that he has to teach so many people like me.

Though wildly ineffective, he is not stupid, and he realizes his students are bored on a daily basis. Because of it, he wields the ''mandatory attendance'' rule as a very effective weapon. This is a sad thing, and I can only imagine what it would be like to look deep, deep into the gaze of his pupils—held against their will—as their hollowed eyes seem to shriek, ''Why? Why would you do this to me you cruel, rotten fiend!''

Don't get me wrong, friends. I'm all about an easy class every once in a while. But it's one of those things that comes with a price. Everybody wishes their class load was a little lighter until they get what they asked for.

The only thing that is worse than a class where you're buried in homework is one where you're absolutely certain that you are becoming dumber by the day. The person who teaches you has everything to do with what you will learn, and it scares me to think that I'm wasting time and money on an instructor who will eventually offer me nothing in return.