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August 7, 2008
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News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education
April 8
No Faculty Left Behind
First-year students are more likely to persist to their sophomore year when high-stakes “gate-keeper” courses are taught by permanent faculty, and campus unions generate significantly greater undergraduate experience of tenure-stream faculty, observe two studies just released at the annual convention of the American Education Research Association.
Related stories
- Revolt in the Adjunct Ranks, July 30
- The Union Impact and Non-Impact, June 3
- New Impacts Seen for Faculty Unions, March 28
- Pushing for Job Conversions, March 6
- How to Help Adjuncts, March 13, 2007
These studies confirm numerous other reports and bolster the widespread faculty conviction that four decades of permatemping is a major factor in the dismal rates of student persistence. Taken together, these reports provide a boost to the major faculty unions, all of whom have launched substantial recent initiatives to reconvert part-time and contingent positions to tenure-track faculty jobs.
On the other hand, the studies and the campaigns have not been universally welcomed by faculty serving contingently. While many contingent faculty welcome the chance to convert to traditional tenure-track employment, others fear that the conversion of some positions would result in long-term faculty serving contingently being forced out by younger job-seekers. Many are concerned that the rhetoric of re-conversion unfairly diminishes the qualifications of faculty members serving in contingent positions. They point out that it is generally the working conditions associated with serving contingently that present risks to student learning, not the characteristics, qualification, or ability of the faculty themselves. When studies link student non-persistence to an inability to maintain relationships with faculty, some faculty serving contingently observe that it’s simply not a matter of personal choice for them whether to spend time on campus — when they’re forced to work multiple jobs in order to pay bills, or when they don’t have an office. (This is usually the observation of the studies themselves, but the rhetoric surrounding the studies tends to slip from discussion of “problems caused by the working conditions of faculty conmpelled to serve contingently” to “problems caused by contingent faculty,” a distinction that National Education Association has made a cornerstone of its own campaigns to organize non-tenure-track faculty.)
All of the major unions acknowledge these concerns and generally propose conversion in accordance with attrition, filling converted positions with faculty serving contingently at the same institution, and providing both pay parity and job security to faculty who prefer to work part-time. This is the case, for instance, with the American Federation of Teachers’ campaign targeting state legislatures with a goal of restoring the 1970 ratio of tenurable to contingent faculty (75-25) in public higher education. All of the “Faculty and College Excellence” or FACE campaign model legislation simultaneously aims to win pay parity and employment security for faculty serving contingently during the conversion process.
Nonetheless a vocal group of faculty advocates fear that on the ground, in the actualities of regulation, oversight, and — especially — appropriation of funds, the rights and interests of faculty who continue to work in part-time positions will be disadvantaged. They believe that funds may well be devoted primarily to providing some tenure-track lines while faculty working on a per-course basis will continue to earn as little as 10 percent of what tenure-track faculty earn. Particularly outspoken in this regard has been the always trenchant Keith Hoeller.
Hoeller, for instance, opposed the AFT’s FACE legislation in Washington state because the protections for part-time faculty were, in fact, stripped from the bill. Blaming the union for this, he wrote an intemperate and frustrated local op-ed that veered into anti-union propaganda, charging Washington AFT with “failing to bargain any job security” and “discriminating” against faculty serving contingently. Sandra Schroeder and Phil Ray Jack, respectively president of the Washington Federation of Teachers and chair of the AFT Washington Contingent Workers Committee, responded, accurately and reasonably, that a number of Washington locals had bargained degrees of job security for faculty serving contingently, and that wages had been bargained from 40 percent of full-time to 60 percent of full-time.
This tension over the legislation is a real disappointment and represents a concern for all of us trying to move forward on this issue while engaging lawmakers in the struggle — all the more so, since politicians are actually listening to this argument for this time since 1988 (when an unfunded mandate, A.B. 1725, limiting contingent appointments was passed in California).
Since 2007, the FACE campaign has succeeded in getting legislation considered in California, Vermont, New Mexico, Washington, Florida, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. Related legislation has been enacted or considered in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Michigan. AFT and NEA have just completed a joint higher education conference in a political climate that, it is hoped, will be friendly to these efforts.
I think there is no question that we must seize these chances to legislate permatemping out of existence. It’s not necessarily an opportunity that will come again soon.
On the other hand, those of us in the tenured minority need to recognize that if these other campaigns do move forward as they have in Washington — if it becomes a consistent trend that protections for the contingent majority are stripped from the bills — it would represent a crisis for solidarity in the academic labor movement.
Understandably, graduate students and the minority of faculty in the tenure stream will be tempted to welcome this kind of legislation with or without protections for the majority of faculty currently serving in contingent positions. But that would be a mistake, undermining prospects for solidarity within individual locals, in disciplinary associations, and between continent-wide activist groups such as the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions and the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor.
Already the disappointment that some members of the contingent majority feel in the Washington bill has led to fears regarding union democracy, especially with reference to those units representing both groups. Many of these concerns are unfounded, but we need to recognize the truth that these mixed units have historically experienced numerous tensions on this score: My own introduction to academic unionism was the aftermath of Vinny Tirelli’s failed drive to decertify the CUNY union for adjunct faculty. The drive ultimately resulted in the election of a reform caucus to the union’s leadership, comprising a broad coalition of graduate students, faculty serving contingently and allies in the tenure stream, including Barbara Bowen and Stanley Aronowitz.
In recent years faculty serving contingently have frequently chosen to form units of their own, where state law permits. This choice reflects the growth in full-time contingent appointments, as well as the reality of academic hierarchy and, especially, broader trends in collective bargaining. Young workers everywhere lost faith in unionism during the 1980s and 1990s because, during those decades, many unions made deals that favored current members at the expense of younger workers. Complicity in the negotiation of multiple-tier workforces — with benefits and wages for a top tier preserved at the expense of everyone else — are not a feature exclusive to academic faculty unions, but it has been a feature of those unions nonetheless.
In part, the choice to form unions of their own represents a determination by some faculty serving contingently that — as those living the norm of faculty life — they can and must lead the profession. This kind of leadership is already evident in the recent blog discussions surrounding tenure, increasing job security for the contingent majority demystifies “tenure” as the privilege of an elite tier, easily abused by administrators and pushes our conception of it, thankfully, toward the more appropriate, humdrum — and muscular — notion of tenure enjoyed by other workers.
Of course faculty serving contingently are not just disappointed in their unions. They feel disappointed in the AAUP, their disciplinary associations, and their tenured “colleagues.” And in these other academic organizations and institutions they don’t have the option of choosing to form a unit of their own. If they are to lead in the disciplines and in advocacy organizations, they must lead in the “mixed units” of the AHA or ASA.
Currently, very few faculty serving contingently choose to pay the fees for active membership in academic organizations of any kind, even when the costs are set extremely low. We have to do much more in all of these groups — including my own AAUP — to recruit faculty serving contingently into membership and leadership. That means providing stipends and travel funding for this unpaid service, and devoting organizing time and dollars. But it also means recognizing and reversing the problematic history of all the “mixed units” in the profession — the cultural and institutional complicity that Cary Nelson has called “academic apartheid.”
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Comments
Always enjoy Bosquet’s stuff. I am puzzled by what seems to be a contradiction in the resarch. Maybe someone could clarify.
The Community College Research Center’s lengthy research articles posted at the Lumina Foundation’s (thinking of Achieving the Dream here) site states that community college student success does NOT hinge on engagement with faculty. I.e., full time faculty are over-rated for the good they do the institution. Faculty don’t educate students. Efficient managerial practices educate students.
This contradicts the research Bosquet reports on that states that “First-year students are more likely to persist to their sophomore year when high-stakes ‘gate-keeper’ courses are taught by permanent faculty.”
Dr. Gradgrind, Professor of English, at 9:35 am EDT on April 8, 2008
Not convinced
Please site the sources for the two AERA papers. I have a few questions. First, it is not clear to me what is meant by “campus unions generate significantly greater undergraduate experience of tenure-stream faculty.” Are saying that tenure-stream faculty will have a better undergraduate experience? This does not make sense.
Second, the study linking persistence to permanent faculty teaching gate-keeping classes and the link you provided to the study that found “that institutions with higher percentages of full-time faculty members have higher completion rates” seem to point more toward differences in institutional mission and the type of student enrolled than they have to do about adjunct faculty members. Consider two (extreme) examples: Harvard — very high persistence rate and (assuming here) high rate of gate-keeping classes taught by permanent faculty and high percentage of full-time faculty. In contrast, consider your local community college — low persistence rate (because they admit “riskier” students) and low percentage of classes taught by permanent faculty (to keep costs low). So these are characteristics of institutions and reflect differences in mission and the type of students admitted — and, in my view, do not condemn the quality of teaching provided by adjuncts. My experience tells me that adjuncts are, in general, caring, dedicated teachers who want to do a great job so that they will be offered a full-time gig. How might you respond to these concerns?
T-bone, at 10:00 am EDT on April 8, 2008
Where to Begin...
Marc,
Your piece is certainly impassioned and works hard to explain the current tensions between those faculty activists to whom FACE is the answer to three decades of abysmal institutional support for the nation’s part-time faculty, and those faculty who see FACE as a slap therein.
This is ironic that you should publish this today, as I am at AACC and had the chance to talk about part-time faculty support, development and employment patterns with, literally, two hundred college presidents, deans, provosts, trustees, etc.... Needless to say, the discussions were educational. To make many long stories short, the support and integration of adjuncts into the universities, departments and courses they teach is a goal many of the leaders to whom I spoke have. All but maybe half a dozen of the college leaders I met had programs (sometimes modest) already in place to address these issues.
Does this mean college leaders will resolve the issues surrounding inadequate compensation, professional development and institutional acceptance and support of the part-time faculty anytime soon? No way. Heck, unionization hasn’t solved those problems either, in some cases, after decades of representation.
Dr. Judy Bates, full-time faculty president of Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier’s faculty association, where contract faculty are on strike, told me in an interview that without requiring part-time faculty to have exactly the same professional and scholarly responsibilities as their full-time colleagues, there is no way part-timers will ever be able to compete for tenure-stream jobs. I think she’s right. Ghettoizing part-time faculty as “teaching-stream” faculty isn’t working for anyone. FACE doesn’t address this.
The tensions you describe between full-time and part-time faculty over the drive by their unions to get FACE legislation passed is a result, I think, of long-simmering resentments. Dr. Keith Hoeller and I became acquainted in 1992, when I first launched Adjunct Advocate. He wrote pieces for the magazine’s “shoptalk column” (about union news). I’m not sure who edited your piece—I saw Doug Lederman staffing IHE’s booth at AACC, but whoever did let you go slightly over the top with your own rhetoric.
Dr. Sandra Schroeder is an AFT VP who gets paid by the organization to do her job and promote AFT’s policies. Dr. Phil Ray Jack is one of three part-time faculty members who serve on the 15 member Executive Council of the Washington Federation of Teachers. He, too, has a professional stake in whether FACE succeeds or not in Washington. Dr. Hoeller is a WFT member who teaches part-time. He has no leadership position in WFT; he just pays $400 a year in dues. If he questions his union, or disagrees with its policies, he’s a member and has every right to do so.
To single him out and call him names (trenchant) and label his writing “intemperate,” and “anti-union” makes it appear that you’re using IHE as a bully pulpit to castigate individual part-time faculty with whom you may disagree in principle. I’m disappointed. You stepped right into the middle of a hornet’s nest, and blamed Dr. Hoeller.
That hornet’s nest is the fact that after 30 years of representation, WFT has improved per course pay (not wages as you mistakenly write) 20 percent for the thousands of part-time faculty whom the union represents. It will be 2038 at this rate when Washington’s part-timers achieve pro-rata per course pay, but the overall PAY gap will never close. This is a fact. Why call the messenger “anti-union” for pointing it out?
Lord knows I am rooting for WFT to negotiate pro-rata pay and benefits next year, but it’s really the WFT’s part-time faculty members, like Dr. Keith Hoeller, and Dr. Jack, who have a personal stake in the process. This includes members holding AFT responsible for the legislation the organization has “convinced” (with some pretty hefty campaign donations) lawmakers to introduce. If the language protecting part-time faculty is stripped out time and again, redrawing the model bill seems logical, not blaming the legislators, or the part-time faculty who get upset at seeing any protection and benefits for them tossed onto the cutting room floor. Why would AFT not want rewrite the legislation to head off the “crisis in solidarity” to which you refer? Your guess is as good as mine.
Finally, I hope Dr. Cary Nelson reads your piece and takes to heart your suggestion that organizations, such as AAUP, need to recruit part-time faculty members into positions of leadership. However, like the apartheid to which Dr. Nelson refers, we must remember it is the minority who must be convinced to recruit the majority into positions of leadership. What this means is that should your suggestion be taken to heart, neither you nor Dr. Nelson would, perhaps, have a place in the leadership of a new AAUP.
Pardon my observation, but those groups with the power, over the past 500 years in American history, have never relinquished it gladly. Perhaps we in higher education will turn history on its head! I can only hope.
P.D. Lesko, Adjunct Advocate magazine, at 10:05 am EDT on April 8, 2008
Believe it? Then invest in it
There is a term in poker called “skin in the game.” About any AERA research paper — if an author authentically believes in her/his research — how much of her/his personal savings is she/he going to invest in the concept? Parents’ and friends’ retirement funds? Convincing the AFL-CIO pension funds (worth hundreds of billions of dollars) to start up such a program?
Quit asking the public to pay for debatable, unproven research. Having seen so much of its money wasted in such programs, the public is deeply cynical about such programs.
Put your own money at risk, first. That would show authentic courage. Until that river is crossed, I seriously doubt the public would invest a dime in such matters.
J.J., at 10:25 am EDT on April 8, 2008
same team, different voices
Hey, P.D.,
Your questions, critiques, and additional information help expand Bosquet’s article. I appreciate your taking the time with your response. I just want to add, I think you can relax a bit about the tone here: “trenchant” isn’t name-calling (my thesaurus lists “insightful, sharp, keen, & shrewd” as top synonyms, with just a hint of “acerbic” at the end of the list, which any adjunct-activist has every right to be), and I at least read Bousquet’s attention to Hoeller’s contributions as mostly sympathetic. Dissent — Bousquet’s, Hoeller’s, yours — can be important and revitalizing. Acknowledging similarity of *intent* is also crucial if we’re to create a coalition powerful enough to make some changes to higher ed labor practices.
ezry, at 11:20 am EDT on April 8, 2008
Back to the Past?
I am insufficiently knowledgeable to enter into the center of this important debate. However, I would comment that the AFT’s goal of returning the tenurable-to-contingent faculty ratio to its 1970 value seems rather like demanding that Greek and Latin be reinstated in the required core curriculum. The profound socio-economic and technological changes that have occurred in our society and institutions since 1970 make reverting to an increasingly ancient model an unlikely way to meet the academic challenges confronting us today.
Don Langenberg, Chancellor Emeritus at University System of Maryland, at 11:20 am EDT on April 8, 2008
“Trenchant” is an Adjective of Praise
P.D., “trenchant” means vigorous, sharp, forceful, clear, and insightful.
I have long supported Keith _and_ the issue for which he stands: pay parity (indeed a pay premium) for faculty serving contingently. I am not an apologist for unions that fail to organize or represent contingent faculty anywhere in my work—or in this piece, which actually strongly supports Keith’s work and his core demand. I didn’t like the one editorial which I feel was intemperate and did veer into anti-union rhetoric. We had an exchange about this op-ed privately before it appeared. My remarks here partly praise him and partly complain about one editorial. I have repeatedly praised and defended him over the years. I share most of his commitments and have advocated for them in my own organization and to union officials in others.
Unions are flawed organizations, sometimes deeply flawed. So are hospitals, police departments, and dean’s offices. That doesn’t mean they’re dispensable (well, okay, we can do without the dean’s office).
I agree—and have written elsewhere more than once—that there are many administrators who wish that they could fix the problems of faculty serving contingently. The best way to help those administrations act on those feelings is to organize. Individual administrators are generally powerless to do the things that organized faculty can do.
Citations for the 2 studies:Glenn, David. “‘Gatekeeper’ Courses Should not be Assigned to Part-time Instructors, Research Suggests.” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2008.
Jaschik, Scott. “New Impacts for Faculty Unions.” Inside Higher Ed, March 28, 2008. Available at:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/28/unions
Marc Bousquet, author, How the University Works, at Santa Clara University, at 11:20 am EDT on April 8, 2008
Bousquet Leaves Adjunct Faculty Behind
Marc Bousquet has given us a wonderful analysis of the current crisis in academe ("How the University Works"). It is therefore disappointing to see him dismiss the legitimate concerns of the adjunct faculty themselves, especially after having recently written a column entitled “Why Contingent Faculty Must Lead” (InsideHigherEd.com, March 17).
Bousquet has marched into the adjunct wars in Washington state without talking with me, or to my knowledge, any of the other courageous adjuncts who have worked with me for nearly 20 years. Not surprisingly, his article has too many errors for me to enumerate in a short comment.
He says that I opposed the AFT’s FACE legislation in Washington “because the protections for part-time faculty were, in fact, stripped from the bill.” Actually, I and many other adjuncts have long opposed the FACE legislation because we do not believe it has ever included any meaningful job security for adjuncts. Quite the contrary, we believe FACE will create new full-time, tenure-stream positions at the expense of current adjunct faculty. (See my “Equal Rights Legislation for Adjuncts,""Adjunct Advocate,” Jan.-Feb., 2007)
In addition, the vast majority of adjunct faculty in Washington state subsist only on quarterly contracts; no adjunct faculty in Washington state currently have annual, automatically renewable contracts, with due process rights if they are dismissed. Though we have run significant job security legislation for four years in a row, neither the AFT nor the NEA will support them. The unions, having failed to bargain similar job security at the local level, then refuse to support legislation to make it a reality.
He also claims that in Washington adjunct “wages had been bargained from 40 percent of full-time to 60 percent of full-time.” Actually, this money was not won at the local bargaining table; it came from all of our efforts in the state legislature.
Bousquet also claims that many of our concerns about union democracy “are unfounded,” ignoring the fact that the unions in Washington state have succeeded in taking away our basic labor right to choose our own unions and our own bargaining units. We do not have the legal option of forming all adjunct unions. As a result of union domination by full-time, tenure stream faculty, our contracts continue to read like the Jim Crow laws of the old South prior to the civil rights movement.
Bousquet falsely labels our efforts at identifying and solving the problems adjuncts have in mixed units as “anti-union propaganda,” thereby dismissing the very real problems that exist when adjuncts are placed in units controlled by full-time tenure-stream faculty—who serve as their immediate supervisors.
Bousquet’s article shows the clear need for adjunct faculty to represent themselves, to choose their own leaders, to select their own bargaining teams, and to set their own legislative agendas, instead of having full-time faculty do this for them.
Chair, Adjunct Faculty Committee Washington State ConferenceAmerican Association of University Professors
Keith Hoeller, at 12:05 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
No Faculty Left Behind
Thank you, Mark, for your thoughtful analysis of how unions are looking for solutions to the academic staffing crisis and why it’s important to do so. Let me make one small correction. The protections for part-timers were not stripped from the bills that were heard in the House and Senate in Washington State. The sponsors and supporters of the bills would not have let that happen, nor would union activists have accepted such a change—if we were given the choice. What happened was that the bills died, both the FACE bills and others that were introduced. Then we were told that the Senate was willing to put a small amount of funding into their budget as a sort of pilot project. We submitted budget proviso language that still did contain protections, but that is where the stripping out happened. I’m not sure why anyone would think we “agreed” to that. However, the amount of conversions will be so small that it would be astonishing if any senior part-time faculty lost their positions, especially since local unions will be on the alert about how the funds are used.
I make this small point more to defend our several friends in the legislature more than to defend our union. They do want to create better employment equity in our colleges, but the legislation they work with unions to introduce is consistently opposed by administration, both individual college presidents and state bureaucrats. The irony of the fact that there are a handful of part-time faculty working against such legislation in our state is that they help administration continue to oppress them. I have never quite understood why the ire that is turned on unions isn’t turned equally on administration, but I suppose we are the “safe” target.
Another small point about the comments. I am not paid by AFT; I am paid by the members of AFT Washington to advance their interests and am responsible to them, as is Phil Jack, a part-timer who is the president of his local as well as a state leader. We—along with other union officers—are elected leaders who answer to our membership, not the leaders of AFT itself. Our state organization introduced FACE, twice, because we have worked on these issues in our legislature for well over a decade; FACE was simply a new vehicle for what we were already doing at the behest of our part- and full-time members. AFT Washington has introduced and supported pay equity legislation and budget requests since at least 1998, long before we became a target of criticism in national forums.
We represent thousands of faculty in 19 community and technical colleges. Almost all, if not all, of our locals have part-time faculty who hold office. Dozens of part-time activists turn out for our annual Lobby Day and other events. We hear from very few about how they would like to leave their locals—in fact, I know of only five or six people who have voiced that opinion in our state. That a very small minority cannot get what they want does not mean democracy is dead in unions or in Washington.
We welcome anyone who wants to become involved in our “flawed” work to join us. There are state and local committees people can join and other offices they can run for. There’s no mystery about getting involved and lots of folks have done it.
One final note. There is a persuasive body of research, coming from several different directions, that should have administrators questioning their over-reliance on part-time and contingent faculty (though only a few will). However, unions fight for more full-time positions not only because of the possible effect on student learning, but also because at least half, if not more, of the part-time workforce—our members—want those positions. It is sad to see some activists pitting one need against another, as though when a part-timer gets a full-time position he or she turns into another kind of human being, prepared to relentlessly oppress and take money from the mouths of colleagues who don’t want that job. It just isn’t so.
Sandra Schroeder, AFT, at 1:55 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
Sometimes “Trenchant” Means Caustic
Keith, I still support you, your struggle, and your views. My piece isn’t about the Washington situation, which is unfortunate with respect to the way FACE ultimately unfolded, but about the future prospects for a legislative component to solutions targeting the exploitation of contingent faculty. The piece is fairly clear: I don’t support FACE without protections and parity for faculty serving contingently. Continuing certain aspects of the Washington experience would provoke a crisis—just when there’s been a lot of progress nationally on organizing contingent faculty.
I support contingent faculty leadership, and respect yours. I wish you would be more temperate and reflective: I’m not your enemy in this piece, or elsewhere. I haven’t waded into the Washington situation, but I have spoken to half-a-dozen contingent faculty, including those in union leadership and those in the rank and file, in Washington since late December.
I find your position increasingly hard to parse, however: you claim that legislation will set you free, but also that it is legislation that keeps you from the promised land of forming contingent-only unions.
Which is it?
Actually, it’s neither.
Legislation alone will not solve the problem. Unions are imperfect. Yours may be especially imperfect—as you say, I’m not in a position to judge, so I won’t.
I agree that union democracy is an issue, especially for faculty serving contingently. Faculty serving contingently who think that legislators will solve their problems for them without self-organization, however, are making a huge mistake. If your union is broken, fix it, decertify it, or get a new one. I repeat: just because people die from medical errors, we haven’t concluded “doctors are unnecessary/villains/patient-haters.” The same is true for unionism.
Solidarity, M
Marc Bousquet, author, How the University Works, at Santa Clara University, at 1:55 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
education today
As Oprah’s 10 week course on the meaning of life streamed worldwide on Monday nights and repeated per request on her website demonstrates education is no longer about bricks and mortar or individual faculty members. Having endured a large number of inadequate prepared teachers and been enlightened by a few expert ones, I would suggest that excellence in education is a very different matter from that of people being minimally employed so that they can support themselves and their families. Tenure is less about students than it is about one person’s needs. The only people in a place to truly change things are politicians. Unfortunately, in most states they do not appreciate the dire living conditons of contingent faculty or don’t really care enough to do anything about it. Kg-12 education is oversupported in many states esp. early elementary as it provide childcare and keeps kids off the streets. This may sound cynical but it is true. Sadly, what adjuncts are asking for is a fair salary. So far as students being educated, some of that is choice as well. I have chased students for that last paper which would give them a “B” in the course instead of an INC which became an “F” — to no avail. I do not pretend to understand teenagers and looking back to when I was one can say I do not understand my motivations then either.
Anna Spiro, NYC
Anna Spiro, at 2:15 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
How are Adjuncts selected?
A tangential question, perhaps, but I think it’s relevant, because I wonder if the selectors are included in the discussions and negotiations about tenure-track vs part-time professors?
Perhaps (as I suppose) it varies by institution, but I wonder if those who are heavily involved in these issues can hazard an estimate for these categories: 1.Academic departments select from applicant pool to fill approved/budgeted positions. 2.Academic departments work from approved budget amount to fill projected teaching needs; departments may hire full-time or part-time, at their discretion, within budgeted dollar amounts.2.Admin-level selection from applicant pool; department input advisory only.
Other information about how faculty get selected, by whom and with what limitations on choice, would be of interest.
Rod Bell, Adjunct Professor at College of DuPage, at 2:40 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
“No Faculty Left Behind”
I read both Keith Hoeller’s PI article and Sandra Schroeder’s response. I did not find Hoeller’s article “intemperate” in the least.Everything he said matches my experience as a 25 year part-time lecturer at community colleges and the University of Washington.
I spent 11 years teaching at Seattle Central Community College, where Sandra Schroeder is on the faculty. The academic apartheid at SCCC was pronounced. Many members of the administration and the full-time faculty treated us with contempt. The AFT did almost nothing to improve the wages, benefits or working conditions of adjunct faculty.
At one point we part-timers were seriously considering a strike. The AFT told us they would not honor our picket lines.
The academic apartheid at SCCC and at the University of Washington Business School, where I worked for 16 years, is appalling. As Hoeller pointed out, we part-timers make a small fraction of what the full-timers earn. Most of us have the same level of education and equal or greater amount of teaching experience.
It is national scandal that the vast majority of undergrads in public colleges and universities are taught by grossly underpaid part-time faculty, not all of whom WANT full-time tenured positions. We should be paid as much as the full-timers, pro-rated for the number of classes we teach. We deserve the same medical insurance granted to full-timers and should be allowed to contribute to retirement plans.
While teaching at the UW School of Business, I was nominally represented by the AAUP, which was dominated by tenured faculty. Part-timers are NOT permitted to vote in the Faculty Senate. Like the AFT, the AAUP has done little to better the situation of part-time faculty at the UW.
In fact, when the University failed to pay all instructors back merit pay for most of the 21st century, one of the full-time faculty members filled a class action lawsuit to obtain back wages for faculty. His lawyers persuaded him to cut the part-timers out of the lawsuit. I suppose this made it easier to settle the lawsuit on behalf of the full-timers.
Since the full-timers sold us out, we part-time faculty had to file our own lawsuit. I was the named plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit representing some 800 part-time lecturers at the UW-Seattle. We settled our lawsuit for $800,000. I’m told that is the largest settlement ever obtained by part-time faculty at a college or university.
I’ve taught undergrads in the Seattle area since 1982. I wasn’t permitted to pay into a pension fund until 1991, when I was 40 years old and started teaching at the UW.
My former colleagues at the Business School make, on average, about $150,000. They rarely, if ever, teach undergraduates. I taught two classes per quarter for 14 years. I had none of the job security provided by Green River or Seattle Central Community College to adjunct faculty. The largest annual salary I earned in 25 years of teaching was $34,000, in 2007.
I now teach an occasional class at UW-Bothell, which pays its part-timers a higher wage than does UW-Seattle. Part-time faculty are treated with more respect at UW-Bothell than anywhere else I have taught.
I would like to urge the Washington Legislature to ban tenure and give every faculty member a three-year renewable contract. I favor two tracks; one for research and one for teaching, with equal pay for all. I hope to live to see the end of this pernicious academic apartheid.
While use of adjunct faculty may be harming undergrads, it has nothing to do with the quality of our teaching or our devotion to our students. As Marc Bosquet mentioned, many part-timers are unable to hold office hours or stay around to give students more attention. Many adjunct faculty have to rush off to a second or even third school in order to make enough money to live. In addition, many schools don’t provide part-time faculty with offices, or stuff them in small offices crowded with two or three other adjunct faculty.
Bosquet pointed out that many part-timers are either forbidden to organize unions or reluctant to join unions dominated by full-time instructors. I joined the AFT while I taught at SCCC, and was active in that union. However, AFT did next to nothing to better the lot of part-timers.
When I taught at the Univ. of Washington I refused to join AAUP because it has no concern for the interests of part-time facutly. Moreover, it perpetrates academic apartheid at the UW by refusing to let part-time faculty vote in the Faculty Senate.
Bosquet and Schroeder may call my attitude union bashing, but I strongly support unions. Throughout my academic teaching career, I have yearned to belong to a union that truely represented my interests. Unfortunately, the AFT and the AAUP promote only the interests of full-time tenured faculty.
Many parties are complicit in the exploitation of adjunct faculty: the Legislature, for refusing to order equal pay; college and university administrators, who balance their budgets on the backs of part-timeers; the unions and the full-time faculty. I’m close to leaving teaching altogether and starting a new career.
Susan Helf, J.D.
Susan Helf, part-time lecturer at Univ. of Washington-Bothell, at 2:45 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
We should agree to disagree and get on with organizing
There is a lingering question regarding the quality of instruction offered by faculty in contingent relationships. Despite the new studies, this question is unresolved and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Some studies suggest that contingent instructors are as effective as tenure track faculty despite systematic obstacles. Other research finds that significant educational deficiencies arise when institutions rely too heavily on contingent faculty. This dilemma is complicated by the fact that most contingent faculty mount heroic personal efforts to overcome policy and practice.
I suggest we go beyond dwelling on the ultimate questions and behave more like organizers—setting to work in an imperfect world with less than complete knowledge. What we lack is the political will and resources to tackle these problems. In my view these are not issue of structure. I do not think that either stand alone units or part time units are intrinsically superior.
The problem is in the organizational culture of the labor movement. Culture changes slowly, painfully so, and it entails struggle and discomfort. Keith has done us all a great service with his advocacy, Marc’s work makes a valuable contribution to the movement and the FACE legislation holds great promise—the debate matters and should be embraced as a positive. It’s ok to disagree. To my knowledge the labor movement has never progressed without conflict—both internal and external—and we should honor those willing to endure the struggle. Sometimes our critics are our truest friends.
My money however is on a long-shot nag: the organization of the rank and file. No quick fixes or short cuts will do. Either we organize and mobilize contingent faculty on the ground, in our locals, and on our campuses, or our efforts, and all our words, will be in vain. C. Wright Mills once said “power won by election, revolution, or deals at the top will not be enough to accomplish this. The power of democratic initiation must be allowed and fostered in the rank and file.”
He was right. Let’s get on with it.
Richard Moser, at 2:50 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
Another inconvenient fact
Excuse me — about whether higher-ed or hospitals are as needed as police departments —
The Constitution calls for “common defenses,” e.g., police, fire (that have no-strike clauses).
There’s nothing about unions in colleges or hospitals. That can be out-sourced and/or privatized.
Facts is hard.
J.J., at 5:05 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
“Conversion” Mistake
The author seems to repeat a common misnomer that “conversion” of PT/adjunct positions means that current adjuncts would get the new secure FT positions. Not at all. The FACE initiative bill in Washington state only promised to converted FTEs, not instructors, and with a vague and essentially meaningless “leg up” for current adjuncts in the application process.
When the bill didn’t pass, the AFT and NEA unions then went ahead and pursued — with some small success — more FT positions directly through the state budget, with not the slightest protection for adjuncts attached. That pretty much shows what they care about most.
In fact, such efforts as FACE only make current adjuncts much more vulnerable. When will people learn that the problem is the insecurity, not the teachers? The obvious good solution, then, is to give adjuncts security and the right to ratchet their hours up to FT if they desire.
Doug Collins, instructor at Seattle Community Colleges, at 7:25 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
J.J. and Inconvenience
The Constitution can be read another way. It provides for “common defense” against illness and injury (hospitals) and ignorance (education). It also provides for defense (unions)against greedy outsourcing private—and public—tyrannies. In short, the Constitution, originally conceived as a way land-owning and industrial elites could share power only among themselves (private tyrannies), has proven, grudgingly throughout American history, to be a good deal more democratic than you seem to want it to be. Inconvenient indeed.
Just sort of kidding and smiling as I say this. Your point is well taken, of course.
Susan Alexander, at 9:30 pm EDT on April 8, 2008
Academic Freedom and freedom of Speech
The author of the article ends by blaming faculty classified as “adjunct” or “part-time” for their condition, by saying that they don’t join the unions, no matter how little the cost. This is the type of naive/ignorant/discriminatory statements we have come to expect from the unions and some faculty called “full-time.” When someone is only making $800 a month, then the $10 “lesser” union fee for “part-time” faculty is un-affordable. The author also assumes that the unions want the “part-time” faculty. When one of our “part-time” faculty inquired about union membership, “full-time” faculty told her she couldn’t belong. In fact, some of the few, but powerful “full-time” faculty see their positions as akin to belonging to a private country club, and don’t want “part-time” people, with their “part-time” rights and their “part-time” kids. It’s easy for the author to write in his circular way. He has a “full-time” job. I wonder if his rhetoric would sharpen if he was stuck in “part-time” limbo. There’s a research study for you! Let’s make all the “full-time” people who sling mud on Keith Hoeller, let’s let those people go on “part-time” salaries, with lack of due process, equal protection, and academic freedom and freedom of speech. It’s time to realize that we are all faculty, and selling fellow faculty for low wages and no rights hurts everyone.And when will Sandra Schroeder finally tell all of us how much she makes a year?
Teresa Knudsen, Less Studies, More Action at Lakeside Languages, at 5:15 am EDT on April 9, 2008
???
“At one point we part-timers were seriously considering a strike. The AFT told us they would not honor our picket lines.”
Susan, you seem to be implying that I had something to do with this, but I have no idea when this supposedly happened, which part-timers were involved, or who from AFT told you they wouldn’t honor a picket line. In my experience, that simply would not happen.
Many of us who have worked on these issues for years have suggested that some sort of strike or walk out might help move legislation forward, but have never found a strong core of part-time leaders who were willing to put something like that together. If you are and you know of a significant number of other people who are, you know how to get in touch with me.
Sandra Schroeder, at 5:15 am EDT on April 9, 2008
Three comments about NFLB
“No Faculty Left Behind” claimed “a number of” Washington colleges have bargained “degrees of job security for faculty serving contingently.” But the best of these measures do not grant “reasonable assurance of employment” and thus the claim is of dubious value. My local has bargained “multiple quarter contacts,” but recipients of such contracts still find themselves denied assignments and capable of drawing unemployment between terms because there is no real job security. Virtually all contingent faculty statewide are entirely probationary.
The article also claims that contingent faculty wages have “been bargained from 40 percent of full-time to 60 percent of full-time.” But these increases, such as they have been, are the result of appropriations from the state legislature, not collective bargaining. Full-time faculty through their unions have supported part-time salary improvements, but their reasons are not purely altruistic: full-time faculty are paid at the part-time rate whenever they teach overtime.
The article further asserted that “very few faculty serving contingently choose to pay the fees for active membership in academic organizations of any kind, even when the costs are set extremely low.” But while a union membership fee of 1 percent of gross income may seem “extremely low” (which is the membership rate at my NEA-affiliated local which I serve as its vice president responsible for membership), to individuals whose maximum theoretical income is capped at $18,000, an annual expenditure of $180 for union membership for a job that offers no job security would surely seem “accurately and reasonably” excessive.
Jack Longmate Adjunct English InstructorOlympic College
Jack Longmate, Adjunct English Instructor at Olympic College, at 9:00 am EDT on April 9, 2008
Thanks — for what?
“The Constitution can be read another way .. Just sort of kidding and smiling as I say this.”
Well, many of my students who are serving in Iraq are laughing, too. They wonder why they’re sticking their necks out for those who would compare carrying M-16s among armed camps with filing “academic freedom” grievances over dead political theories.
Hey — just sort of kidding, right?
J.J., at 10:05 am EDT on April 9, 2008
Legislation without Unions?
Folks, I didn’t “sling mud” at Keith Hoeller. I suggested he tone down the anti-union rhetoric while strongly supporting the position that legislative solutions framed by powerful unions incorporate protections and parity for faculty serving contingently. Nor am I “blaming” faculty serving contingently for their situation.
However, I don’t see any way for faculty serving contingently to fix the problems of contingency other than by leading, and by leading in faculty organizations of all kinds, but most especially unions.
It is in my opinion delusional to think you can have a legislative component to resolving the problems of contingency without unions.
Honestly, any group that had enough political will and organization to drive legislative solutions should be able to run a leadership campaign in their union. Or decertify it. And get a new one.
The core contradiction that I’ve seen maintained here is that “legislation alone will solve our problems” while saying “legislation keeps us trapped in our evil unions.” Well, which is it?
A real resolution for faculty serving contingently means leading faculty institutions, some of which will necessarily be “mixed,” like senates and disciplinary organizations, as well as, in some cases, unions.
Which means joining—even if you find the dues excessive, until you can lead enough others serving contingently and get the dues reduced.
I know that’s hard. Not everyone can do it. But there’s no alternative. Tenure-stream faculty usually have neither the power nor the will to fix the problems of contingency. (If you think I’m bad, fine, it’s your privilege to think that. But it gets boatloads worse than me.) Solidarity, M
Marc Bousquet, author, How the University Works, at Santa Clara University, at 10:55 am EDT on April 9, 2008
No (poor) student left behind?
Regarding “skin in the game” — here are a few educational groups that have skin in the game —
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/jointheaflcio/unity_nlc.cfm
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
http://connect.educause.edu/Libra...view/OpenContentandtheEmerging/40626
http://www.google.com/search?q=op...:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
J.J., at 12:05 pm EDT on April 9, 2008
Wow!
A pro-union teacher produces a study that promotes pro-union attitudes. Wow. Ain’t that a coincidence?
Unapologetically Cynical, at 12:05 pm EDT on April 9, 2008
Who’s speaking for whom?
I remember when Dr. Cary Nelson first spoke out nationally in support of part-time faculty. It was electrifying, and he gave a voice to many who were simply unable to voice their opinions without risking their jobs. Cary Nelson continues to speak FOR part-time faculty. For years, it was difficult to get adjuncts to write for Adjunct Advocate magazine because they were so frightened of retaliation.
After interviewing Marc, reading his book, and several of his postings, it is obvious that he, too, wants to be a voice, like Dr. Nelson, for part-time faculty. However, there is a huge difference between speaking out on behalf of part-time faculty, and telling them what they should do.
Marc (though not only Marc) has referred to a long-time adjunct activist, as anti-union. I can imagine Cary Nelson giving just about anyone a piece of his mind. (I had the pleasure during a recent interview.) However, I simply can’t imagine Nelson referring to any part-time faculty activist as anti-union. What does “anti-union” mean, anyway? Let’s ask the House Committee on Part-Time Faculty Anti-Union Activities.
Marc urges, in essence, that a part-time faculty activist, and his many colleagues, who have a much, much greater personal stake in the situation, and who have a much longer institutional memory of the struggles part-time faculty have endured, to be more temperate and reflective. I’ve published pieces about the legislation those same activists have gotten passed to the benefit of their colleagues. I’ve published pieces about the class action lawsuits instigated by the same activists on behalf of their colleagues.
Are these gains the results of lack of reflection and intemperance? It’s best to let the Washington State part-timers with the $800,000 settlement comment. Interestingly, Washington’s thousands of part-timers, represented by Dr. Schroeder, could have had multi-year contracts today, but WFT officials refused to endorse the proposed legislation because, according to a WFT official, WFT didn’t propose it; Keith Hoeller and his colleagues convinced a legislator, without giving the politician a single penny in campaign donations, to introduce the bill.
I have reported on union indifference to part-time faculty concerns, and the bargaining of incredibly lop-sided contracts, for longer than I care to say. As far as I can determine, FACE has not won concrete gains for AFT’s part-time faculty members.
As far as I can determine, WFT doesn’t have friends in the legislatures where FACE legislation is being introduced; the group has politicians to whom hundreds of thousands of dollars have been donated directly and indirectly. This is money, for instance, from the dues of the thousands of WFT members whom Dr. Schroeder refers (including Keith Hoeller, but not Marc Bousquet), but who’ve not gained a single job or a single dollar in pay increases from the expense of the oush for FACE, or the “pilot program.”
If people want to support part-time colleagues, that’s going to mean respecting and following the lead of the part-time faculty who are (and have been) leading over the past decade. I think we’re watching as part-time faculty come into their own in terms of defining how THEY will lead their own movement.
I’m probably being way too trenchant again (the acerbic side of the list of synonyms), but street cred is street cred, and from what I have seen and reported over the past 18 years, Keith Hoeller and his Washington State part-time colleagues who belong to WFT, and pay their dues, have got it hands down. The best thing is that the Washington State part-time activists represent just the tip of the part-time leadership iceberg out there.
I think Cary Nelson helped calved the iceberg of part-time faculty activism and leadership. Meanwhile, Marc Bousquet and Dr. Schroeder’s (AFT’s) are left steaming full speed ahead, sure the safest way to cross the ocean that separates full-time and part-time faculty, is an old-school brand of organizing and unionism, Academe’s Titan.
P.D. Lesko, Adjunct Advocate magazine, at 4:20 pm EDT on April 9, 2008
A Dictatorship of the Flexible
PD, you have talked to me at length, and appear to have some acquaintance with my book and this piece. But what I see in your remarks is a mindboggling, persistent, multi-pronged misunderstanding. Nowhere in any of my work have I ever attempted to speak for faculty serving contingently or “tell them what to do.”
Few reasonable people would dispute that this piece supports Keith Hoeller’s position while quarreling with his rhetoric in a single op-ed.
Few reasonable piece would dispute that I have for more than a decade worked for contingent faculty direct leadership—NOT, as you bizarrely claim, for tenure-stream faculty to speak for them, including myself.
Hence what I urge in the first chapter of the book, “a dictatorship of the flexible.”
Marc Bousquet, author, How the University Works, at Santa Clara University, at 5:20 pm EDT on April 9, 2008
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adjuncts and committment
Thank you for stressing the conditions that affect how adjuncts and other non-tenured faculty work.
In my job working with faculty and teaching staff, I find the teaching staff committed to their students: willing to take on the work of midterm review, office hours, and actively notify advisors when students are struggling in their courses even though the notification process is voluntary. In some departments, teaching staff have up to 16 hour loads each semester and are required to hold office hours (as it should be) but have no say in governance issues.
I would look harder at the budgetary constraints and governmental decision making within which schools and departments must operate, the “do more with less,” the cut the fat” mantras of State legislatures, and at the role consumerization has had in defining what it is that universities do and how it gets paid for.
These studies target the result of a complex of issues. This article refocuses the debate a bit away from teachers trying to do their jobs to a system that makes that difficut and points to them as a problem.
Theron, at 9:05 am EDT on April 8, 2008