PrintNot too long ago, the speech communications instructor and video producer looked at the 15 years she’s spent shuttling between teaching jobs at Portland State University, Portland Community College, Marylhurst University and the Northwest Film Center and said, enough! The teaching—about which she is passionate—“was the easy part.” The hard part was “running around between schools, dragging my material, trying to get to my classes, setting up, being emotionally prepared for students.”
So two years ago, she applied the brakes on her freeway-flying treadmill, deciding she could continue to impart her craft one well-chosen class at a time, and go back to the video production work that more reliably pays her bills.
In her view, “the big myth in higher education is, if you work hard, get a degree, take on extra, you will get hired as full-time faculty.” She wishes someone had clued her in earlier that that wasn’t going to happen.
Another myth, she notes, is about the the American professoriate, which, as a whole, is showing the stress of having been underresourced for years: “I fully support tenured professors because there is a level of excellence that happens with continuity and supportive collegiality. I don’t see how that can happen when a fairly high percentage of faculty are teaching part time.”
Lopez’s observation about what it takes to achieve excellence in the academy is a concept central to a national campaign, kicking off in Oregon this winter, and in a number of other states as well. On Feb. 6, state Rep. Peter Buckley introduced House Bill 2578 in the Oregon Legislature. Named the Faculty and College Excellence Act (FACE) the bill would do three things:
■ specify the percentage of undergraduate courses to be taught by full-time tenured or tenure-track professors at public institutions;
■ determine a salary and benefits for part-time and adjunct faculty on a par with full-time tenured faculty, and direct institutions to provide that as well as preferential consideration for part-time and adjunct faculty seeking full-time positions; and
■ establish two funds—one for four-year colleges and one for two-year colleges—to provide the means for institutions to achieve the goal of pay and compensation equity for part-time/adjunct and other nontenure-track faculty.
FACE bills across the U.S.
Oregon’s FACE bill is based on model legislation that is at the heart of a campaign AFT leaders and adjuncts have been formulating for almost two years. As AFT On Campus goes to press, bills have been introduced in six states—California, Connecticut, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington. In addition, affiliates in another nine states are expecting to see the bill introduced in their state legislatures. And this year, the national union will be working to have companion legislation introduced in Congress.
Not every bill is exactly the same, but they share the same goals—to end the exploitation of part-time, adjunct and other nontenure-track faculty, and to create a mechanism for re-establishing an appropriate balance of full-time tenured faculty in the U.S. professoriate. At a very minimum, the introduction of the legislation, with its accompanying hearings, is intended to spark a long-overdue conversation in the public eye between academic professionals and policymakers.
The background on FACE
A FACE campaign document, “A Call to Action,” lays out the problem (see sidebar, Online Resources, to learn how to access the whole report).
The American public believes that our colleges and universities are the best in the world and that the reason for this is the excellent faculty. Yet, while the public wasn’t looking, an astonishing transformation of the academic workforce has taken place over the last 20 years. Colleges and universities have turned away from filling full-time tenured jobs as they come open. Instead, they have hired hundreds of thousands of nontenure-track faculty members, especially part-time/adjunct faculty, and then denied them proportionate salaries, decent benefits and professional supports such as paid office hours.
Today, less than 30 percent of the instructional workforce is full-time, tenured or tenure-track. Part-time/adjunct faculty members now constitute the single largest group of faculty, about 35 percent of the instructional workforce, and other contingent full-time nontenure-track faculty and graduate employees make up the rest. “As a result of all this,” says “A Call to Action,” “while the proportion of contingent workers across all occupations is about 30 percent, the proportion of contingent labor in higher education is now about 70 percent. In terms of time in the classroom, full-time faculty members teach 60 percent of the undergraduate classes. The research capacity of American higher education is seriously threatened when less than one-third of the faculty is paid and supported to do research.”
What is behind this radical change? Higher education finance experts trace much of the problem to erratic and often declining state financial support. The report notes that, after being adjusted for inflation, state and local funding per student at public colleges and universities is now at its lowest point in 25 years. And there are other disturbing trends related to financing that suggest erosions in the quality of our higher education system:
■ Tuition increases have been the number-one way to make up for lost public funds. Over the last 10 years, tuition increases have totaled 51 percent at public four-year colleges and 26 percent at two-year colleges. College costs are rising much faster than family income.
■ Public colleges and universities are scrambling for new sources of support, including corporate-sponsored research and training grants, lucrative licensing agreements and privatization of student services. According to the U.S. Department of Education, university revenues from outside sources increased 155 percent between 1992 and 2000. This activity has led to a situation in which corporate business considerations, profits and intellectual property rights are trumping academic integrity in institutional decision-making.
■ Among the 30 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States used to rank number one, but now ranks just seventh, in the percentage of citizens who enter postsecondary education and then complete a bachelor’s degree or postgraduate program.
■ While the percentage of students entering higher education has increased 20 percent in 20 years, the number of students graduating has gone up only 3 percent.
AFT works to avert crisis
As these trends have been unfolding, AFT affiliates have been working for years to find a way to end what the union describes as “the academic staffing crisis.” Almost 20 years ago, the California Federation of Teachers scored an important legislative victory when Assembly Bill 1725 passed and set a standard of 75-to-25 as the desired ratio of full-time to part-time faculty. While the bill lacked an enforcement mechanism and funding stream, it nevertheless set a goal and served as a model. It led, in 1999, to the passage of another bill in California, A.B. 420, which funded parity pay adjustments, expanded eligibility for health insurance and paid office hours for part-timers. Washington state picked up the legislative ball, passing a series of bills in the past 10 years that have closed the gap on part-time/full-time pay and resource inequities.
The United University Professions has made improving conditions for the part-timers it represents at the State University of New York a bargaining priority in the last two contracts. As a result, part-time faculty are represented systematically throughout the UUP contract in the areas of pay, benefits and professional development opportunities.
Across the country, in Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Washington, through effective organizing, bargaining and political action, part-time/adjunct and nontenure-track faculty have made inroads in addressing some of the most egregious of their inadequate working conditions. But the improvements are incremental and the problems that underpin the academic staffing crisis keep getting worse. Part-time faculty still, on average, make 43 percent of full-time tenured faculty’s pay for teaching the same full-time workload.
As FACE or related bills have cropped up in the states, AFT full-time and part-time nontenure-track members and faculty experts have been putting the “face” on the harrowing statistics and trends. In testimony, they’ve been serving as witnesses, telling policymakers about the need for FACE on many levels.
In New Mexico, for example, FACE legislation was introduced in January. A panel of five AFT members spoke in support of the bill on Feb. 10. Donna Swanson, president of the TVI Employee Federation, pointed out some common misperceptions on the part of the public regarding “ivory tower” professors whose incomes are in the six figures and who vacation in Europe in the summer. “In New Mexico, wages for full-time faculty fall between $35,000 and $65,000,” she said. “And part-time faculty with the same credentials earn under $25,000 if they are fortunate.”
Tim Krone, president of the full-time and part-time faculty union at Northern New Mexico College got the attention of legislators by describing a week in the life of one of his members, a “freeway flyer.” The man, a physics and math instructor, was unable to appear but had conveyed to Krone the map of his 24-credit load teaching route. He starts his week teaching a class in Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, then drives 90 miles to Sante Fe Community College, then on to Northern New Mexico College 25 miles away in Espanola, then drives back 20 miles to run a class at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos. He spends the night in his car, so he can resume teaching his classes in reverse order. For this circuit of about 220 miles he earns about $12,000.
Testifying at hearings before the Washington State House and Senate on Feb. 14 and 16, Daniel Jacoby, an economics professor at the University of Washington, showed the steep price students and institutions pay when faculty are deprived of adequate resources. In terms of qualifications, he notes, the differences between part-time and full-time faculty are not great. But in other areas of job performance, such as grading practices, his data show a significant gap. One slide he showed legislators, for example, reveals that nontenure-track faculty tend to grade higher than full-time and tenured faculty. The reason, he explained, is that nontenure-track faculty “are worried that the only feedback administrators have on them is students’ evaluations.”
Jacoby and other Washington colleagues were testifying on behalf of House Bill 1875, Providing for Faculty Opportunities at Institutions of Higher Education, and its companion bill Senate Bill 5514. The legislation, which was introduced in January, would strengthen the teaching corps by creating more full-time, tenured faculty; increasing salaries that will attract and retain highly qualified instructors and professors; and providing equal pay and more resources and support for part-time faculty. It was spearheaded by AFT Washington and its affiliates at state universities and two-year colleges, and is supported by the Washington Education Association as well.
“This is a more comprehensive approach than we’ve ever taken before,” testified AFT Washington president and AFT vice president Sandra Schroeder. “In the past, we came in asking for small bites of the apple.”
Robin Etheridge, a Pierce College Federation of Teachers member, noted in her testimony, “In the 15 years I worked at the college, only one full-time position has opened up in my department.”
Phil Ray Jack, president of the Green River Community College Federation of Teachers, testified, “I remember when I got my first part-time teaching job, I felt I had my foot in the door. Now, 11 years later, I’m still teaching part time.”
In Oregon, legislation was introduced Feb. 6, with hearings scheduled for the end of March.
“We’ve been working on this a long time,” says Michael Denbrow, president of the Portland Community College Faculty Federation, a local of full- and part-time faculty. He rattles off efforts begun in 1991, including an attempt to mandate faculty ratios that went nowhere, and money appropriated for a study of the issue. College presidents resisted, he says. Budget problems made things worse. “When we raise the issue at the local level, we are told it’s a state issue. At the state level, they say it’s a local issue. Or they say it’s a national phenomenon,” he reports. “We need to pursue the problems at all three levels simultaneously,” which the FACE bill in Oregon would allow them to do.
Another challenge in Oregon, as well as in other districts around the country, is that staffing levels are not a mandatory subject of bargaining. “We raise the issue,” says Denbrow, “but when push comes to shove, we can’t take it beyond the talking and complaining level.”
The Oregon bill would change that at institutions where faculty are represented by a collective bargaining agent. This was a consideration in the November elections, says Denbrow, who is AFT Oregon’s vice president for political action. “When we were doing candidate questionnaires [to prepare for pre-election state endorsements], we asked the legislators if they supported the ratios or if they supported making staffing levels a mandatory subject of bargaining. They waffled on ratios, but supported the bargaining.”
At four-year institutions, the reliance on adjuncts to the detriment of maintaining full-time faculty lines has been extreme, observes Mark Perlman, president of the Western Oregon Federation of Teachers. “Western is twice as big as it was 25 years ago,” he says. “Some departments have the same number of full-time faculty as 25 years ago. At WOU, we’re at the highest percentage of courses taught by adjuncts. But adjuncts can’t do the committee work. They can’t be invested in the university in the same way. The aspect of full-time faculty keeping the place running” is a challenge, he says.
In California, community college affiliates and full-time, nontenure-track faculty and staff at the University of California represented by the University Council-AFT have achieved significant gains in the Legislature. Still the California Federation of Teachers is embracing the FACE approach, says Marty Hittelman, president of the CFT Community College Council: “The FACE legislation is an opportunity to take the next step forward toward part-timer equity in salary and benefits, and increasing the percentage of full-time faculty assignments. We are prepared to take on that challenge.”
