The Part-time Teaching Majority

Historic Hump Day

The Part-time Teaching Majority

Most teachers, despite their professional training and the responsibilities of their job, receive salaries below those paid to unskilled and semi-skilled workers...If the community wishes to retain its teachers and attract competent, energetic people into the profession, it must be willing to provide decent remuneration. -- Irving Gordon, 1956

As a college student in the late 1980s and early 1990s I was ever only taught by one part-time teaching assistant and that was in conjunction with a tenured faculty member who appeared occasionally. The remainder of my instructors were full-time faculty members whose offices I could regularly visit in person on campus. The data from the National Center for Educational Statistics in 1993 supports that experience, noting only 40% of faculty were part-time (Caprio, Dubowsky, Warasila, Cheatwood, and Costa, 1998).

Times have changed. Today, more than 70% of college faculty are not tenured nor fulltime. They are paid per course, rarely are invited to participate on committees or in governance and curriculum decisions, and are not usually compensated when they are. In this regard, universities are missing out on tapping one of their most plentiful and useful resources, as adjuncts serve as viable liaisons between the academy and the professional world. 

So where exactly are higher education institutions positioning their professoriate within the whole of society if they are only supporting and employing 30% of them on a full-time basis? How is this impacting our nation? After all, “Faculty members perform research and development work upon which this nation's technological and economic advancement depends. Through their public service activities, they make valuable contributions to society” (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014, para. 1). If we have cut the percentage of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty in half over the past thirty years, are universities only making half the societal impact they were?

What does the picture of adjunct faculty look like today? This graphic designed and originally published by Dr. Michelle Kassorla on her blog gives us an idea. 

As an adjunct faculty member over the past 8 years, I have often felt ignored and underappreciated by the universities for which I work. This is a common experience of which The Adjunct Project is attempting to gain a bigger picture, gathering data from adjuncts across the USA regarding pay, working conditions, and benefits. How about you? Do you have the option of health insurance, retirement benefits, participation in campus committees or governance decisions? Please add your data to The Adjunct Project. When you do, you get to see how it compares to others. 

Also, please lend your voice to our own survey, and join me tomorrow for Theoretical Thursday when we discuss the duties expected of adjuncts, how they are evaluated, and resources for support and improvement. 

See you then, 

Melynda

@Melynda_Conner

#TCBHigherEd

References:

Caprio, M. W., Dubowsky, N., Warasila, R. L., Cheatwood, D. D., & Costa, F. L. (1998) Adjunct faculty: A multidimensional perspective on the important work of part-time faculty. Journal of College Science Teaching, 28(3), 166-173.  

National Center for Education Statistics. (2014). National study of postsecondary faculty: Overview. Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nsopf/.