UCLA hiring Asst. Adjunct Professor “on a without salary basis” (PhD required)
recruit.apo.ucla.edu
recruit.apo.ucla.edu
Probably explains why the "Open date" & "Final date" are just 30 days apart.
Having "UCLA professor of X" on a CV looks way better than having nothing.
Keep things in perspective: there are people who pay large sums of money to go on boot camps so that they can have a line on their CV that can open doors.
If somebody better wants to come and teach for free, this is how they'll find them.
This is extremely common in academia. This is typically used to ensure exceptional long time researchers and PhD students, who already have all the context they need to have, have a shot at staying in the institution as a reward for their work.
The standard application process doesn't allow this because you have literally the whole world to compete with for a position, evaluation processes can be gamed and exploited, and in some cases you also have unscrupulous individuals who falsify their credentials in a way that can't be corroborated in a timely manner.
Source: I’m not in this department, but I’ve worked at UCLA for ~10 years
Interesting how a rule that was meant to curve corrupted hiring practices get so easily circumvented.
Not a rhetorical question. I genuinely would like an explanation of how you can legally post "Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position" in a job posting, when minimum wage laws dictate the minimum wage that can be paid for employment.
Specifically, in California [1]:
> Although there are some exceptions, almost all employees in California must be paid the minimum wage as required by state law.
The 'exceptions' are for learners (those with little experience), the mentally ill, and the disabled, which all have different wage laws (none of which allow any of those groups to be employed for free either).
If you pay someone more than $0, that’s when you need to pay them at least minimum wage.
> FLSA prohibits public sector employees from volunteering, without compensation, to work additional time performing the same type of services or work for which they are employed. For example, a police officer can properly be considered a volunteer, and need not be paid, for reading to school children at the municipal library. The same officer must be paid, however, and cannot be considered a volunteer, when directing traffic for a city-sponsored road race in the same municipality where the police officer is employed.
So I guess if you already have a position in another state school, you apparently can't take this one.
[1] https://www.wardandsmith.com/articles/wage-hour-law-voluntee...
This position is unpaid at a public not private employer. In this case the commonly understood meaning of "volunteer" is likely the same as the legal one.
The "without salary basis" looks pretty clear to me, and I'm sure someone holding a PhD could spot that as well.
I'm really wondering what this job posting is about as well.
Which is what makes this episode so juicy. First the language was not in the least ambiguous -- the post means exactly what it says. And from the fact someone (if not multiple people) not just at PhD level, but reasonably high up the totem pole in that department must have signed up on post.
In my case the employer actually declined, because of the risks involved with German job security laws (it may have put me in a position to sue for a paid position after some time).
1. "The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer"
2. "It is the policy of the University to undertake affirmative action, consistent with its obligations as a federal contractor, for minorities and women"
3. "All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity..."
The answer is, obviously, that the “adversity” is just an excuse, and they do in fact directly care about racial and sex composition of faculty and student body. Nobody’s fooled here, racial discrimination is the entire point of the exercise.
I'm reminded of the words of Malcolm X—"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there."
Americans may have struck down de jure segregation (big applause!) but we're still de facto segregated a generation or two later. K-12 schools serving predominantly black communities have less funding, less extra-curriculars, less honors/AP courses (UCLA expects a 4.5 GPA, have fun getting one wifhout lots of advanced courses available). Don't get me started on the racial discrepancy in being able to get childcare or pay for ACT/SAT prep courses that all my white peers did in their summers.
Affirmative action is discriminatory in the sense it admits there's more to applications than your number, as much as that irks SWEs who love to reduce people to an algorithm. You can't just say "we have no black students because no qualified black students applied!". There are certainly qualified minorities, maybe the way in which you're measuring "qualified" has a racial bias? To give one example, the father of SATs and AP courses was a racist eugenicist who thought (correctly, but for the wrong reasons) standarized tests would help stop minority admissions since the 1920s were all about the idea that race and intelligence are linked. [1] Do we think that intention is totally irrelevant to the outcome of these tests? There's a reason educators don't like them! Cheaper to use scantrons than to try and assess with any nuance.
[0] https://slate.com/business/2019/09/harvard-admissions-affirm...
[1] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis...
This is how this is all widely and commonly understood: if you ask around whether “white men” are a “protected class” according to Civil Rights Act, most people will say that they aren’t. They in fact are, but that’s just the “fiction” part of the legal fiction here.
...or it really can't and it's quite clearly breaking the law?
Let's break it down:
Statement 3 days all applicants will be considered, regardless of criteria. One can consider a candidate while preferentially selecting based on some criteria.
For instance, a common way organizations will operate is to use minority status as a tie breaker between two equally qualified candidates. Both candidates were given full consideration, satisfying #3, while some prefer was used to provide for disadvantaged groups, satisfying #1 and #2.
It really isn't, and trying to force absurd 1984 references makes absolutely no sense at all.
Think about it for a second: if you already feel you have the absolute best candidate for a spot already working at your side, or you create a position specifically to get that person to work for you, does that mean you are racist or sexist or, as you chose to imply with your absurd comparison, fascist?
Because the accusation has absolutely nothing to do with doublespeak, and given the fundamental difference between the meaning of doublespeak and the case discussed then it's so far-fetched that just reads as a desperate attempt to gratuitously pin the fascist label.
> They are literally making contradictory statements while refusing to make any logical association between them.
If you knew the definition of doublespeak and read the article and the comments you'd quickly understand the absurdity of your accusation.
Actually, it sounds like it definitely doesn't break minimum wage laws. Since UCLA is a public land grant university, not private, wouldn't this simply be a volunteer position that isn't subject to minimum wage?
A university does not have to follow the commercial process, they can make predatory contracts well outside of reason, tax free (for them), and reap all the profits.
Things universities intentionally avoid teaching so students won't organize against the system abusing them.
I was wondering if we'd start to see changes in the process, as universities must be losing the best candidates to industry jobs. Apparently they've gone a different direction. This implies there must be a glut of PHDs willing to work for free to get the experience. But I'd expect this would no be attracting top graduates, it looks more like a remedial way for people with money to get experience.
It is hard to overstate the difference in mentality. Few who are primed in academia would even think about salary as a main argument.
Sadly, the trajectory runs in the other direction. There’s a glut of good and internationally mobile candidates who will literally work for free around the clock for a chance.
They are, of course, mercilessly exploited.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220318235002/https://recruit.a...
And yes, it literally says:
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an Assistant Adjunct Professor on a without salary basis. Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.
An astonishing ethical (and intellectual) lapse on the part of someone at UCLA, in other words. It's easy to see why it got removed so quickly.
The math is easy to figure out: if you spend 75 hours a year as an adjunct to increase your day rate by $100, then your time as an adjunct is worth up to $250 / hr.
Position: Unpaid Intern to teach classes