ARCHIVE: February 2008
February 28th 2008
Better Late Than Never
I have just started reading Dr. Mark Bousquet's book How The University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. I found Cary Nelson's introduction slightly out of touch with reality. Dr. Nelson, a self-professed "tenured radical," and President of the AAUP, has long spoken out on behalf of part-time faculty to his credit and ours! However, I found his introduction to How The University Works contradictory and filled with myths about who teaches part-time.
In fact, Dr. Bousquet falls into the same bad trap. His book is full of myths about who part-time faculty are and what we do. I am finding it somewhat frustrating, but I am soldiering on. The most controversial proposition Dr. Bousquet puts forth is that there is plenty of work for all of the Ph.D.s who graduate. In other words, there is not an over-production of Ph.D.s, but rather an under-production of jobs within higher education.
I wish I could quote his research, but unfortunately I am finding many of his suppositions unsupported by research, but rather reliant on what I imagine must be his personal experience. Some of the research he does use to support his conclusions is somewhat outdated, in one instance coming from as far back as 1992.
Anyone else out there reading his book?!?
Posted By Part-Time T. at 8:18 PM
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February 21st 2008
If You Can't Take the Heat, Get Outta the Leadership Position
Sandra Schroeder is feeling misunderstood.
I wrote about her in an earlier post. More specifically, I wrote about her testimony in front of legislators in Washington State in support of the AFT's FACE initiative. Yesterday, adjunct activist Keith Holler got the treatment from AFT's Craig Smith in his blog, FACE Talk. Hoeller wrote an editorial critical of FACE for a newspaper in Washington State. Mr. Smith replied that Keith's op-ed piece contains "inaccurate assertions." Translated, Craig Smith accused adjunct activist Keith Hoeller of, well, making stuff up.
However, I didn't intend to focus on Craig Smith's blog entry. He refutes Hoeller's accusations and "serious charges" without ever uttering Hoeller's name. It is a chillingly familiar act to part-timers to have someone refer to them as "irresponsible" and the author of "inaccurate assertions" and pointedly never once refer to them by name. Invisibility is a sharp-edged sword.
Sandra Schroeder left a love letter for Craig Smith praising his "careful analysis and spirited defense" of AFT Washington's work on behalf of FACE. Below Schroeder's remarks, P.D. Lesko left a comment about Smith's blog entry and Schroeder. The entry contained the quote from my blog entry in which I dug up and shared Ms. S's testimony before the Washington State legislature about part-time faculty. She refers to "cheap labor forces that have come close to undermining our system."
After being called on the carpet for this crack, she backed waaaaaaaaaaaaay up and wrote that we'd all misunderstood her. She writes: "Ms. Lesko uses a quote from me to imply that I think of adjunct faculty themselves as undermining our system, therefore implying that I think little of them. Anyone who knows me well could refute that assertion, but I am unsure why Ms. Lesko wants to think that badly of me in the first place. By 'cheap labor forces' I clearly meant those forces that drive businesses to push down the wages and benefits of all workers, both in this country and throughout the world."
So, she clearly meant those forces that drive businesses to push down the wages and benefits of all worker, both in this country and throughout the world. Those forces? Like in Star Wars? Are we talking Darth Vader here...the Force in Sandra Schroeder's universe that drives businesses to push down wages? Well, no. We're talking higher education funding. She was testifying before the "forces" to get more money to hire more full-time faculty. She just forgot to ask for an equal amount of money for the part-timers whom she also represents. She says it's because "since we started our work, part-time salaries in our two-year colleges have gone from an average of 40% of what a full-timer earns for teaching the same class to 60%."
According to data from the NEA, in 2005-2006 Washington State full-time faculty at two-year colleges averaged $53,312 per year, plus$15,963 in benefits. A decade earlier in 1995-1996, those same faculty averaged $44,712 per year, plus $10,462 in benefits. So, while per course pay for part-time faculty rose 20 percent in 15 years, in a significantly shorter period, benefits and salary for full-time faculty rose 25.5 percent. Part-time faculty at two-year colleges in Washington State do have access to year round health care coverage, but only after two consecutive years of employment, and this was negotiated as a benefit in 2006. So, between 1996 and 2006, the average full-timer at a two-year college in Washington State was compensated to the tune of around $125K for benefits, and, of course, an average of 40-60 percent more pay for teaching the same class, as Ms. Schroeder points out.
At the rate WFT is going, part-time faculty in the state will reach 100 percent per course pay equity with full-timers in the year 2038. Part-time faculty in Washington will never, unfortunately, reach equal pay status, because full-time faculty pay and benefits are not calculated on a per course basis. The union negotiates pay and benefit contribution level minimums.
Please don't misunderstand me: Yes, part-time faculty earn a few hundred dollars more per course now thanks to Ms. Schroeder and the WFT (They pay dues out of that money, of course). More importantly, please don 't misunderstand Ms. Schroeder: After many years of her leadership, part-time faculty still earn 40 percent less per course than their full-time colleagues.
And never forget the bottom line: If representation continues on in this way, part-time faculty represented by the WFT will wait 30 years to reach per course parity, and will never have a glimmer of hope of reaching negotiated pro-rata equity.
There's no misunderstanding that.
Posted By Part-Time T. at 12:03 AM
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February 11th 2008
UUP and OUT
At the college hockey games in my town, when an opposing player is sent from the game to the penalty box, the 10,000 people in the arena wave goodbye and shout, "Ssssee, Ya!"
A colleague sent along an interesting email. On February 10, 2008, at the Delegate Assembly of the United University Professions (UUP) in Albany, New York, Acting President, Fred Floss, was unexpectedly unseated by Phillip H. Smith by a vote of 185-155. Smith will serve as president of UUP, a union that represents about 8,000 part-time faculty throughout New York, until May 2009.
Whether new UUP president Phillip Smith will be more sympathetic to the plight of the union's part-time faculty members remains to be seen. Part-time faculty activists within UUP are, however, optimistic. I wrote in an earlier post about the UUP's recent proposed contract, negotiated under Fred Floss's leadership. Negotiators proposed a 13 percent raise for both part-time and full-time faculty represented. This is, of course, a sharp stick in the eye to the part-timers, because in dollars the raise for full-time faculty is close to 10 times more money than the raise negotiated for the union's part-time faculty members.
We'll all certainly be reading more about this in The Chronicle of Higher Education and InsideHigherEd.com.
Oh, and to Fred Floss...."Ssssee, Ya!"
Posted By Part-Time T. at 10:56 AM
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February 10th 2008
It's the Working Conditions. Really.
If you haven't already heard of FACE, let me introduce you to it. It is an initiative by the American Federation of Teachers, and FACE stands for Faculty and College Excellence. We all want faculty and college excellence. On the surface, it sounds like a laudable legislative project. If you go to the FACE webpage, you'll read that the drive aims to achieve two goals:
How, one wonders, could AFT officials convince tight-fisted legislators, who have cut higher education funding to the bone, to cough up millions to fund new full-time faculty positions? It's an important question. According to a paper from the Justice Policy Institute, "the proportion of all state funding for higher education...declined from 70 percent in 1985 to 53 percent in 2000."
To answer my own question, I decided to see exactly what various AFT officials actually said to legislators in support of FACE. To do this, I searched out testimony by AFT officials in support of FACE on the Web. It made for some interesting reading. Let's begin with the testimony of Mr. Daniel McCarthy, Executive Vice President, Federation of Technical College Teachers, in Connecticut. He testified on February 22, 2007.
Mr. McCarthy: "Let me begin by saying first and foremost the goal of AFT Connecticut is to increase the number of full-time faculty and staff throughout our state public system of higher education...."This bill is not only important for Connecticut, but is also part of a national effort to correct a systemic problem in higher education. Connecticut joins Rhode Island, West Virginia, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington as states that have introduced this legislation. We will soon bejoined by at least 10 other states who will be introducing similar legislation. The campaign, sponsored by our national affiliate the American Federation of Teachers, is known as the Faculty and College Excellence Campaign or FACE."
In Oregon, Michael Dembrow, President, Portland Community College Faculty Federation, testified in support of FACE on March 28, 2007. His union represents 600 full-time faculty and 1,200 part-timers.
Mr. Dembrow: "When I began teaching at PCC-Cascade in 1981-82, I was THE part-timer in English for my campus. I taught three courses a term for the next couple of years; all the remaining courses were taught by the four full-time English faculty at the campus. I was well-qualified, worked really hard, did great work. I was very poorly paid, especially considering all that I was doing, but I considered it an investment that would soon translate into a full-time position. And you know what? For me, that’s exactly what happened."When one of the full-timers retired in 1984, I was able to apply for and eventually take over her position. This was the way that the system was supposed to work. Few courses in the core curriculum were taught by part-timers, and those part-timers had a good shot at getting an open full-time position. Unfortunately, my experience back then would be almost incomprehensible to today’s part-time faculty, certainly those at my college....
"We take advantage of their love of teaching and their hopes of getting one of the increasingly rare full-time positions, we deny them benefits, deny them any real job security, even though many of them have taught for us for a decade or more....
A moment later, he testifies that while "many of them have taught for us for a decade or more"....the problem is...
"Because of the poor pay and lack of job security, we see large turnover in part-timers every year—approximately 25% of PCC’s part-timers are new each year.Managing these large numbers consumes substantial college resources, leading the colleges to have to hire more administrators and release full-time faculty from more and more of their teaching in order to serve as department chairs and coordinate them."
Then we have the kicker when Dembrow tells the legislators:
"Part-timers are generally not paid to be on campus other than to teach their courses, and in many cases they are off running to another job at another college or university (their combined annual teaching load often exceeds those of full-timers)....This practice has consequences. There is a growing body of literature that points to the harmful effects of over-using part-timersin your FACE packet you can find an annotated bibliography of some of them."
Say what you like, but I simply cannot imagine the majority of part-time faculty don't make time to meet with students. That's my opinion, of course. What bothers me about Mr. Dembrow's testimony is that his union could have provided the exact percentage of the 1,200 part-timers represented in the local who "are off running to another job at another college or university" instead of meeting with students. Quite simply, his local could have surveyed its part-time faculty members.
William Scheuerman, then President of UUP, still Chair, American Federation of Teachers Higher Education Program and Policy Council, testified as well. Here's what he said to the Oregon legislators.
"Students deserve colleges which have a coherent curriculum and teachers who know and understand it. Students need professors who are up to date in their fields and even better, contributing to scholarship. Students need faculty who are able to provide long-term mentoring and support throughout their college careers....
"Please do not misunderstand me. I neither criticizing nor attacking the talent and professionalism of part-time faculty. Rather I am criticizing a system that imposes so many burdens on them...."
The problem is that you can't testify that part-timers are not up to date in their fields, don't conduct research or mentor their students in one breath and then blame the "system" in the next breath. Why not? Because, in reality, staying up to date in one's field, going to a conference and interacting with one's students have nothing to do with the "system." These are very individual and personal choices made by all faculty. It's a fact that there are plenty of tenured faculty who stop publishing once tenured, and who never teach undergraduates if they can help it. Further, why on earth would legislators cough up money for pro-rata salaries when union leaders lead them to believe part-timers are shirking their professional responsibilities?
In Washington State, Sandra Schroeder, President of AFT Washington testified. Her testimony began with this:
"I am honored to be here today to speak on behalf of this important national legislation. The national effort to address the academic staffing crisis and bring balance into thehigher education system is called the Faculty and College Excellence Campaign and HB1875 is our state’s version of the FACE act. Bills very similar to this one have recently been introduced in Oregon, West Virginia, and New Mexico. Within a few months, we expect legislation under the banner of the Excellence Act to have been introduced in at least fifteen states. But with your help Washington could be the first in the nation to take this step forward and to fight against the cheap-labor forces that have come near to undermining our system." (The bolding is mine; the incendiary language is Ms. Schroeder's.)
She goes on to testify that: "Students are not being served well by their state and colleges if they do not have a solid core of full-time faculty guiding their educational experience, and would also benefit by having a stable part-time faculty/workforce that has adequate salaries, office space and other resources that show their institutions value them and their work."
Define adequate. Later in her testimony she claims,
"And to create one full-time position from three classes currently taught by part-timers with benefits costs only $20,000 a year. For only two million dollars, you create 100 new full-time positions in the community and technical colleges. The price might be higher in the universities, but not so high that it is unreachable. And as you make more full-time positions, the cost of closing the pay gap decreases as well."
If she is referring to full-time contract lectureships (combining three single courses taught by three part-time faculty into a full-time, contract lectureship), adequate in her opinion is $20K per year plus benefits.
Reading the testimony of these AFT state/local union leaders was instructive; it was also maddening. On the one hand, they took pains to stress that part-time faculty are good teachers and hard workers. On the other hand, they used part-time faculty as scapegoats. AFT's FACE Talk blog entry of February 7th discusses criticisms such as mine.
"It's the Working Conditions," trumpets the blog title. Oh, really? As Norma Desmond croons in "Sunset Boulevard," "It's the pictures that got small." The problem is this: If it's the working conditions, the unions are to blame. They have represented for decades some of the part-time faculty in states where FACE is being pushed. The FACE blog author writes, "Part-time faculty often suffer from low morale caused by these conditions, as well as feeling like 'second-class citizens' because of snubs received from administrators and some of our full-time, tenure-track colleagues."
The author of the FACE blog February 7th entry forgot to include another group that has snubbed part-timers and treated them like second-class citizens: their own local, state and national unions. FACE is the most insulting snub of all. AFT is spending loads of money, time, effort and energy on a self-proclaimed push to get more full-time faculty hired. Ok. I agree that colleges need more full-time faculty. However, the problem is that in focusing on college excellence by selling out part-time faculty, AFT has painted a target on the backs of the the tens of thousands of part-timers whom they represent, and left them to fend for themselves. Yet again.
Posted By Part-Time T. at 3:15 PM
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February 1st 2008
Show Me The Money
Could it be that some universities forgot to send along their monthly donation checks to the campaigns of Sen. Max S. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Actually, I've no idea which university officials have donated to the respective campaigns of the gentlemen from Montana and Iowa. According to the New York Times, "Mr. Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Mr. Grassley, its senior Republican member, want to know how each university's endowment is managed, including the cost of investing the assets and what role the institution's governing board has in overseeing the money and how it is distributed." The senators want to know the total cost of undergraduate tuition, including all fees, "both sticker and average, mean, and median" prices over the past 10 years. They also ask for the amount of tuition assistance that each college has provided to undergraduate students during the same period. College officials have 30 days to respond.
Did you just blink rapidly? Did a huge smile just spread across your face? Are you, like me, envisioning the look on the faces of the presidents of the 136 wealthiest colleges in the United States when they cracked open their copies of the letter from the senators? I image more than just a few uttered sentences that included the phrases "Sweet Jesus," "Holy Moses," and "Damn Buddha's Eyes." Who asks colleges to account for their endowments? Turns out lots of people do, and college and university officials routinely refuse to share the information with the public.
There are those within higher education who are claiming that the institutions simply don't track the data requested by the senators. (Yes, that sound you hear is me guffawing). As if colleges don't track how much an undergraduate education costs, and how much they charge for one.
The senators want to understand how the endowments are managed because they have this crazy idea that colleges and universities could, maybe, use their endowments to make college more affordable for students from middle- and lower-income families. The typical college spends about 4 percent of their endowment each year. At Harvard, of course, that's 4 percent of $25 billion dollars. I'll leave the exact math to the part-timers who teach it.
So, listen, I had this great idea that colleges could spend, say, one percent of their endowments annually on their part-time faculty for things like pro-rata wages, professional development and benefits. Why not join me in sending along the idea to our intrepid senatorial duo from the Finance Committee? To email Senator Baucus, click here. To email Senator Grassley, click here. Be sure to let the senators know how many students you teach, how much you earn per course, whether you have benefits, and what your college/university's total endowment is at the moment.
Posted By Part-Time T. at 8:00 AM
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