On Adjunct Labor and Community Colleges

They’re experienced, dedicated, and overworked, and they make up the majority of your colleagues at any given community college. Give them a place at the table, for the sake of the whole institution.

By Catherine Adamowicz

That semester, twenty years ago, I taught a total of four writing-intensive courses at three different institutions—two expository writing courses at a two-year college and two technical writing courses, one at a university and the other at a four-year college. I had already been teaching at the college level for several years. My total gross salary was $5,500. I had no medical coverage.

I didn’t create any new assignments for my courses, all of which I’d taught before. I doubt that I even skimmed through one professional journal that semester. Having taught regularly for two years as an adjunct at one of those institutions, I could have been a valuable member of a committee, but I didn’t have time to sit on any. At the two-year college, I was lucky to have had a seat in an office the few times that I could meet with students; neither the four-year college nor the university provided meeting space. That semester was the first and last time that I taught at three different institutions, and I was exhausted and humiliated.

I try to remind myself about that semester when I work with the part-time faculty members at the community college in Massachusetts where I am now chair of the English department. Although I have escaped the adjunct trap, the patterns nationally show that more and more institutions are relying on contingent (full-time non-tenure-track as well as part-time) labor to educate our students. In my own department, thirteen of us are full time; during any given semester, there are about sixty part-timers. (This kind of ratio is not uncommon at community colleges.)

During my past year as chair of the department, only a few part-time faculty attended our monthly meetings. Naturally, these part-timers are busy trying to put together a living wage and cannot spare the time for department meetings. Members of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education would do well to think about the implications of the fact that most of the teachers in my department are not able to attend the meetings where we have been formulating the “educational objectives” and “meaningful measures” that the commission would like to see in place. In the case of my department, approximately 20 percent of us will determine the objectives and measures for all of our students, including those of the 80 percent of the faculty who are part-time. Not only will we not benefit from the experiences and ideas of the part-time majority, but it also will be difficult to communicate effectively to them the determinations made by us, the minority. Our part-time faculty have a modest adjunct center that includes several computers, but I daresay few are able to spend much time reading detailed emails.

It is ironic that discussion about shared objectives and measures was initiated in part to provide part-time faculty new to our institution with the type of information that could enable us all to work more cohesively and our students to achieve greater success. Of course, another reason for initiating this discussion was so that we could agree upon the same objectives and measures before the state foisted them upon us. In other words, we are being driven toward homogeneity. Gone are the days when faculty new to an institution could read course descriptions in a catalog, take a look at sample syllabi, and then prepare their classes based on their own creativity. That kind of autonomy was small compensation for a job for which they were rewarded so little, but it was at least an acknowledgment of their professional capacities.

Reliance on Part-Timers

The relationship between the use of part-time faculty at community colleges and graduation rates— the focus of an article by Daniel Jacoby in the November–December 2006 issue of the Journal of Higher Education—is particularly relevant to those of us teaching at such colleges in Massachusetts because our state’s board of higher education has concluded that our graduation rates are too low. In the final report from the Task Force on Retention and Completion Rates at the Community Colleges, published in February 2007, the board lists as one of three goals the “improve[ment] [of] student success by increasing the graduation rate for first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students who complete within [the traditional graduation time].” Jacoby concludes that graduation rates at community colleges nationwide “decrease as the proportion of part-time faculty employed increases.” Indeed, one of the Massachusetts board’s recommendations for achieving the goal of increased graduation rates is to “increase full-time faculty.”

At first glance, the board’s report and Jacoby’s study may seem to suggest that the fault lies with the academic preparation of the part-time faculty, which, of course, would reflect badly on the profession as a whole. I suspect that more than a few fulltime faculty members assume that they have better academic preparation than part-time faculty. But according to Jacoby, at community colleges only 20 percent of full-time faculty hold a PhD, and 10 percent of the part-time faculty do—the majority of community college faculty have the same credentials.

Jacoby suggests that the correlation between graduation rates and the number of part-time faculty may have to do with the very low wages for which those faculty work. At community colleges, the average part-time faculty salary ($9,782) is not quite a fifth of the average full-time faculty salary ($46,636). But those figures are based on part-time faculty teaching 7.3 hours per week for every 11 hours per week that full-time faculty teach. For about two-thirds of the teaching load of full-time faculty, part-timers earn about one-fifth the pay. As it is not possible for an individual, let alone a head of household, to live on $9,732 per year, part-time faculty today cobble together multiple part-time teaching positions, just as I did twenty years ago. And, just like me twenty years ago, most part-time faculty today probably have little time or energy to meet with students, create new materials through reflection on their teaching practices, or serve on committees.

Since most institutions make no commitment to future employment for contingent faculty and offer little money and no medical insurance during employment, why should these overworked, underpaid professionals have any loyalty to the institutions or the students? Why should they work on committees when they may not be working at the same institutions next semester or next year? As Jacoby puts it, the “part time or ‘permatemp’ system provides few incentives to foster rich interactions between faculty and students, and thus undermines the campus learning climate.”

The Spellings Commission

The 2006 report from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U. S. Higher Education, made recommendations that most part time faculty cannot follow. The report “urge[s] postsecondary institutions to make a commitment to embrace new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies to improve student learning” and “finds that the results of scholarly research on teaching and learning are rarely translated into practice.” With the heavy teaching loads at institutions of higher education, particularly at community colleges, it is difficult for full-time faculty to find the time to “embrace new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies” or to keep current with “scholarly research,” never mind to “translate [it] into practice.” How could part-time faculty possibly do those things?

Two of the student learning assessments recommended by the report, the National Survey of Student Engagement and its sister, the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, emphasize the importance of students meeting with faculty outside of class. Of course such meetings contribute to the retention and graduation of students— one-on-one interactions with faculty inspire individual students. But part-time faculty seldom have the time— or even the office space—to meet with students outside of class.

Reliance on part-time faculty also has implications for shared governance—another important topic that the Spellings Commission report does not clearly address. In 2003, the AAUP’s clear and strongly worded statement Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession emphasized the increased workload that results when there are not enough permanent faculty to participate in governance: “a diminishing number of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty must take on additional institutional responsibilities that are not typically shared with contingent faculty, including faculty governance and institutional support of various kinds.”

Sometimes, even when contingent faculty are encouraged by permanent faculty to participate in governance, they do not. At my community college, this past year we have been forming a faculty and professional staff senate, which includes both full and part-time faculty and professional staff. When it came time to vote on the drafted bylaws, the majority of part-time faculty did not vote. Frustrating as it was for those of us hoping that part-timers would participate, we understood that they were probably discouraged from voting by the uncertainty of future employment at the college.

How does institutional reliance on part-time faculty affect the profession? According to the research and based on my experience, it decreases the ability of all faculty— both full and part time—to conduct research, apply research, determine the selections of texts and methods of teaching and testing in their own classrooms, and share in the governance of their institutions. It encourages full and part-time faculty to remain divided.

Catherine Adamowicz is associate professor of English at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Rhode Island. For five years, Adamowicz was coordinator of service learning and a teacher of writing and literature courses. Currently, she is chair of English and humanities and coordinator of elementary education as well as a teacher. Her e-mail address is cadamowi@bristol.mass.edu.

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