Part-Time Fairness

If we are to continue hiring part-time faculty at all, and there is no doubt we will, then the previous cap made no sense. Limiting part-time faculty to one course at a campus was a brutal restriction. Nor is there any question that increased gas prices are having a decisive impact on our part-time colleagues. I meet part-time faculty in some states—living an hour or more from where they teach—and earning less than $2,000 per course—whose costs for gas will actually exceed what they earn. “I’m hoping my course doesn’t make,” one told me; he didn’t want to refuse a class because that would take him off the list for future courses, but he was destined to lose money on the assignment. In areas where people travel long distances, including great plains states, there is need for an immediate increase in per course compensation. But the only long-term solution is more full-time, tenure track jobs. Meanwhile, the CFA is done well at improving working conditions for all.

Cary NelsonAAUP President

Cary Nelson, at 8:20 am EDT on July 14, 2008

Administrators and Self-Interest

While I applaud Diana’s goal of better wages and assignments for contingent faculty, the unfortunate problem is that administrators already are fully aware of how the system abuses contingent faculty, the abuse is perpetrated by administrators with their eyes wide open. Everyone tends to work in their own self interest.

Administrators do so by cutting costs on the backs of the contingent faculty. Full-time tenure track faculty often help administrators because of their fear that the “adjuncts will take our jobs", not seeing that it’s already been happening under their noses for decades.

What is needed is to effectively organize contingent faculty so they gain the power to work towards their own self interests. Since there are now more contingents on a college campus than any other group, besides students themselves, consider the power of number. If we could create a new model to accomplish this, the proverbial sky is the limit.

Barry Edwards, Oregon COCAL, at 10:55 am EDT on July 14, 2008

I’m lucky enough to have a full-time teaching job at the college level, although not tenure-track. I have an honest question, though, that I have not seen asked elsewhere (which is probably apostasy): why do so many contingent instructors keep working part-time on two or three different campuses? Why not get a different, “lower” job that would be full-time with benefits? It seems to me that a high school teaching job with better pay and benefits (than adjunct work) would be preferable to being in limbo-esque “adjunct hell,” or even that an office job would have to be better than working a job whose transportations costs match the salary. I know teaching at the college level is different than other forms of labor; nevertheless, a PhD or an MA should be able to make economic decisions weighing the annoyance of a different line of work versus the out-and-out disrespect from administrators holding instructors in adjunct limbo.

schencka, English Instructor, at 1:53 pm EDT on July 14, 2008

Adjunct wages

I cannot agree with Schenk’s remark about why do adjuncts continue to work for such low wages. I saw a job listing at a comm. coll. 50 miles from my town. At the cost of gas and maintenance compared to the wages offered, I concluded that I would be losing money by taking the job, so I passed. I’d rather take anything else locally than accept a position whose pay is an insult to my intelligence. Besides, I can tutor and make more money. Let the college administrators find some other chump.

Victoria English, at 4:45 pm EDT on July 14, 2008

Schenka,College faculty are not qualified to teach high school. To do so, they must take a minimum of 3 education courses, practice teach (no matter how long they have been teaching), and pass certification tests.

On-line teaching is certainly one option. It is not a perfect solution. Many of my community college students can’t afford a computer. Blackouts are common in my area. People who process information differently than the set hyperlinks on a computer course may have an extraordinarily difficult time with computer courses.

If we are going to persist in the utopian, and utterly admirable, goal of offering a college education to every single person in the US (suitable or otherwise), the entire system will have to change.

Judith, at 8:15 am EDT on July 16, 2008