VIEWPOINT: State system exploits part-time professors
KEITH HOELLER
In its November issue, Money magazine asks: “Do college professors have great jobs, or what?”
It answered with a resounding “Yes!”
The magazine ranks college teaching as the third best job in America in its November issue. It also ranks college teaching as the third least stressful job in America, with nearly 60 percent of professors surveyed saying their job is low stress.
When I shared this story during lunch with several professors at my community college, there was howling laughter all around. No one recognized themselves in this story, which highlighted a median salary of $70,400, flexible scheduling, intellectual freedom, long holidays and summer vacations.
How could Money have gotten it so wrong?
Money paints the tried – and largely untrue – picture of college profs who spend only half their time teaching and the other half leisurely writing and publishing, all the while protected by lifetime tenure and the hallowed principle of academic freedom.
This was true of most college profs until the oil embargo of 1973, and it still remains true for the 30 percent of college professors who are lucky enough to obtain an increasingly scarce tenure-track job.
But it does not apply to the two-thirds of professors who work off the tenure track in our state’s community colleges, teaching as many as 50 percent of all courses statewide. Adjunct professors are paid only 60 percent of what tenure-track profs earn for teaching the same courses. Tenure-track professors earn $50,000 a year, while adjuncts who teach a half-time load average a mere $15,000, and their salaries can fluctuate dramatically from quarter to quarter.
Adjuncts teach without any meaningful job security and hence no academic freedom. Many work without any health care or retirement benefits.
It is not surprising that Money missed these “invisible faculty”; colleges have gone to great lengths to hide them.
In response to a similar faculty survey conducted by U.S. News and World Report for its America’s Best Colleges guide, several colleges tried to improve their rankings by either minimizing their adjunct numbers or falsely claiming they had none at all. Colleges routinely do not include these professors in their annual catalogs or identify them in their quarterly schedules.
Though many students have protested the use of foreign sweatshops, they are unaware that their degrees are the product of domestic sweatshops, where professors are not paid for all of the hours they work outside of class and live in fear of losing their jobs because of something they said or because a tenure-stream professor wants to teach their class.
The exploitation of our state’s adjunct faculty is the direct result of their being denied the fundamental labor right to choose their own union. Unlike many other states, Washington has forced the adjuncts into the same unions as the tenured faculty, who often serve as their direct supervisors, hiring, evaluating and not rehiring them.
Given the fact that the tenured faculty participate in “shared governance”with the college administrations, the Washington Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are in effect employer-dominated unions, thereby proving the biblical observation that no one can serve two masters without favoring one and disfavoring the other.
Following a tradition begun by former Gov. Gary Locke in 2001, Gov. Chris Gregoire has proclaimed Oct. 29 the “Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Recognition Day,” urging “all citizens to honor the thousands of adjunct and part-time faculty who teach in every university and in every technical and community college within our state.”
Yet in recent years, the governor and Democratic leadership have been missing in action on the adjunct faculty issue.
In January, state legislators should clarify state law to allow adjunct faculty to choose their own independent union. They should pass legislation giving annual, continuing contracts to long-term adjuncts. They should make it clear that adjuncts are eligible for unemployment and enforce the state law that makes it illegal for employers to claim to the Employment Security Department that adjuncts have reasonable assurance of continuing employment when they do not.
For the short term, legislators should support the principle of equal pay and equal work for all faculty. For the long term, they should establish a single statewide salary and incremental raise scale, as is common in the community colleges of Vancouver, B.C.
Keith Hoeller is the co-founder of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association and lives in Seattle. He has taught philosophy and psychology in several community colleges in the Puget Sound area for the past two decades.
