by AFT President Sandra Feldman
Special Edition--October 28, 2001

Part-time
professors lack
basic workplace
protections.

The Hollywood image of the professor is perhaps best personified by John Houseman’s portrayal of Professor Kingsfield in The Paper Chase, a well-established, well-paid, full-time, tenured faculty member with the freedom to teach his class as he chooses.

If only life were like the movies.

Today, 43 percent of the nation’s faculty are part-timers, and the ratio of part-time to full-time grows larger every year. While many of these instructors are excellent teachers, and expect to be treated accordingly, the truth is somewhat different. Most part-time professors are not permitted to have office hours, advise students, conduct research or participate in campus life in the same manner as their full-time colleagues.

What is more, only 17 percent of part-timers receive health insurance, and just 20 percent have a subsidized retirement plan. And, of course, wages for these workers are outrageously low. In California, for example, where the annual average compensation for full-time community college faculty is $45,700, the compensation package for a faculty adjunct with a full-time workload is just $19,245. Graduate teaching assistants make even less, generally around $11,000, and often have to purchase their own health insurance. Moreover, many of these graduate employees are international students barred by visa restrictions from seeking other types of work.

Overworked and Undercompensated

The terms "part-time faculty" and "adjunct professor" don’t adequately describe the work life of these instructors. A significant number are "freeway flyers" who cobble together a full-time workload by teaching a few courses at three or four different campuses.

No matter what they’re called-part-timers, adjunct professors, or teaching assistants-they often lack basic workplace protections. Two years ago, Richard P. Chait, a professor of higher education at Harvard University, analyzed 250 college handbooks and found that only 10 had academic policies that explicitly mentioned part-timers.

In other words, nearly half the undergraduate teaching force lacks workplace protection and academic freedom. Unprotected by tenure, part-timers are arbitrarily fired-or simply fail to have their contracts renewed.

Consider, for example, a recent case in Kentucky involving an adjunct professor who was removed from teaching a course on communications because he used offensive and oppressive words-in a lesson about offensive and oppressive words. Others have been fired or been denied a new contract because they organized unions or refused to make grade changes.

Part-timers are routinely left in limbo regarding course assignments, and few are placed on tracks that lead to full-time employment. Further-more, because of their lack of job security, part-timers are more vulnerable to intimidation and harassment by administrators.

But the news is not all bad for part-timers. A new report from the American Federation of Teachers, "Marching Toward Equity," notes that many campuses and many states are making slow, but steady improvements in the treatment of part-time faculty.

For example, in October 1999, California governor Gray Davis signed a law that provides matching funds for community college districts that offer health insurance and paid office hours for part-timers who teach at least 40 percent of a full-time load. Other states, most notably Washington, have passed similar legislation. One important aspect of the California law is that it requires a study of the state’s 30,000 part-time faculty members. As the Sacramento Bee noted, "The first step in addressing the part-timer problem is to determine how much of a problem it is, how much it hurts students and how unfairly it treats the part-time faculty members themselves."

Focusing Attention

But part-timers aren’t sitting quietly by waiting for a knight in shining armor to come to the rescue. Thousands are joining unions and negotiating contracts that provide increased wages, benefits, job security and protections for academic freedom. And this week (October 28-November 3), from coast to coast, part-timers are holding "Campus Equity Week," a series of events to raise the profile of part-time faculty issues. The American Federation of Teachers, which represents 45,000 part-time instructors, is working with a long list of other faculty unions and higher education groups to make Campus Equity Week a success and to build momentum for equal pay for equal work in higher education.

In the fictional world of The Paper Chase, Professor Kingsfield required his students to defend their opinions with legal precedents and rigorous logic. In the real world of college campuses with part-time faculty, the case for better pay is airtight: We entrust them with the education of millions of students; we should compensate them, with fair pay and fair treatment.