I have no background in psychology, but reading through so many postings here from current and former full-time colleagues I can feel the widespread mental health damage caused by the organization. As for the adjunct faculty, many seem to have figured out it’s just not worth it. How much longer this can continue?
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I got a new job a few years back and my new boss pretty much told me that she thought I had PTSD from that place. I didn’t have it as bad as some who post here but I watched all my friends get laid off and many rounds of broken promises to students, and more and more oppressive environment while the future of the place looked increasingly dark or non-existent. Meanwhile the class content got worse and worse in the shells and the school’s reputation got poorer and poorer. I got stuck in a feedback loop listening to haters online telling me that my work and my students were worthless and fraudulent (something I have never believed) and then internalizing that I would never get another job due to all of the fallout from the FTC lawsuits. Plus watching the internal politics and knowing that I wasn’t going to be the last one standing due to favoritism. DeVry was good to me for a long time but the last few years were brutal and I was struggling with anxiety and depression because I couldn’t get out.
That comment by “isd” is probably one of the best consolidated summaries of what DeVry faculty face each day. It wasn’t always this way, but reading that post was like “strumming my pain...”
Not sure who penned this quote, but it fits: “Even the best teachers can be rendered ineffective in a dysfunctional school.”
Zf91Xjs, I think you're right. I struggled for nearly a decade: my first supervisor was a deranged liar and a bully. But, I needed a job, so....Little did I realize that my next several supervisors would also be unbalanced, self-motivated, and unfair. I kept my head down and dodged quite a few bullets. I struggled with students ill equipped for college-level study and was never able to teach to that level (with a few notable exceptions). I struggled with course material, forced to teach to someone else's expertise, at times unteachable shells, poorly designed and impossible to fulfill. I struggled increasingly with an entity that valued their bottom line more than higher education and were, therefore, happy to admit 5th-grade level readers, and more than few d--g addicts and mentally ill people--people we were pressured to persist. At the end, I struggled against supervisors "just following orders," too unimaginative to do anything else. The entity drove a deeply embedded crabs-in-a-barrel mentality, dehumanizing faculty and students alike. And the ever-present job (lack of) security, a billowing dark cloud hanging depressingly over everyone. I quit. I have gone on to improved circumstances. It is difficult to forgive a single individual who harmed one and refuses to apologize or admit wrong-doing. Multiply that problem by DeVry.