By Brittany Hill
Adjunct professors are every university’s ideal asset. They are cheap to hire, easy to let go, and do not add to the pesky pile of benefits paperwork to be filed.
Call them what you want–contingent faculty, adjuncts, or part-timers–these professors are vulnerable, having the most insecure teaching position in higher education. They receive only a couple thousand dollars per course, can be let go at the end of a semester for a myriad of reasons, and do not receive health or retirement benefits. Facts like these constantly haunt part-timers throughout their semesters of teaching, or even years, all without much of a chance for tenure.
Regardless of adjuncts’ unfortunate conditions, Central Connecticut State University makes thorough use of them. According to the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment at CCSU, adjunct professors outnumber the full-timers on campus. In the Spring 2013 semester, CCSU employed 482 part-time professors and 434 full-time professors.
“We have fairly decent office space, albeit it can get cramped at times and there is no space to meet with students in private,” says Jane Hikel, an adjunct professor for over twenty years and member of the Part-time Faculty Advisory Committee at Central Connecticut State University. “That being said, the full-time faculty is not much better off when it comes to office space. Most of them have to share their office with another faculty member and most of the offices don’t even have a window.”
Despite the cramped conditions, CCSU’s employees seem generally satisfied with their experience. Every year, CCSU conducts a College Employee Satisfaction Survey. The most recent summary of the results come from 2010 and prove to be positive for both adjunct and full-time professors. Descriptions such as “My supervisor pays attention to what I have to say,” ranked in the Areas of Strength section. While Areas for Improvement included phrases such as, “The institution makes sufficient staff resources available to achieve important objectives.”
Even with the high number of adjunct faculty at CCSU, the chance of gaining eventual tenure, and subsequent benefits, remain slim. A report by James Monks, an associate professor of Economics at the University of Richmond, titled, “Who Are the Part-Time Faculty?” published by the American Association of University Professors, showed that of over 26,000 instructional faculty and staff participants nationwide, 65% of part-time employees claimed they would not prefer a full-time position at their current university. These statistics challenge a common perception. They seek to divulge a different truth behind the nationwide protests demanding equal benefits between part-timers and full-timers based on objective principles, not on subjective motivations.
However, part-timers can face demoralizing and dissuading treatment as mere fill-ins, temps, or placeholders until the next Joe Shmoe is hired. They can remain under constant stress of not knowing whether they will be employed next semester or not, and for what reason? If they need to quit for unforeseen medical reasons, their name is wiped from the university’s booklets without a trace. Job security is non-existent. The university has no legal obligation to take care of part-time faculty as they do full-time, tenured professors with equal credentials. Oftentimes, part-timers do not have their own desk or office for after-class hours, making relationships with students difficult to uphold when E-mail is the most convenient option.
More so than full time professors, part-timers are perceived as less capable or less experienced by the students. Students are quick to assess their capabilities and talents based on employment status alone. Stories about professors across the country report feeling “invisible” at their universities and in their departments.
“I know of some departments that do not provide part-time faculty with office space, not even a shelf to store a book, and part-time faculty are not welcome at department meetings,” says Hikel. “They obviously consider part-time faculty a necessary evil.”
How many of the professors in your major’s department are adjuncts, are not tenured? Does it make a difference? How, if at all, are they different from the full-time professors?
“A few of my students have actually told me that they think part-time faculty are generally more dedicated to their students and their discipline,” says Hikel.
According to a study by Northwestern University, adjunct professors ranked better than those with tenure did. At a first glance, such findings may shock tenured professors, but the reason is simple. Adjuncts are evaluated on their performance every semester, as are full-time professors. However, unlike tenure-track professors, the adjuncts’ chances of being re-hired thrives on the academic success of their students. In other words, the better the students’ grades, the happier and more apt a student will be to give positive remarks about the professor.
As a society, employment and income remain vital for survival, especially if supporting a family. Full-time professor positions are on a constant decline, showing appeal to adjunct positions. A number of adjuncts teach as a side job to primary employment. Some use teaching as their main employment, seeking work elsewhere in order to make ends meet. Although Monks’ study states that 46% of part-timers have a full time job, some to compensate for the lacking income as an adjunct, many professors chose to teach part-time and engage in professional academics out of sheer passion and interest.
Nonetheless, excluding individual motives, unions nationwide have made advances toward equal rights and just treatment of professors, with the adjuncts’ qualification for equal benefits and opportunities remaining a focus. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly source of higher education news for faculty, students, and professors, Oakton Community College in Chicago, Ill. has increased its percentage of full-time hirings from adjunct ranks in the last decade. The university’s union pushed for equal employment opportunities, demanding that for each open full-time position, adjuncts must account for at least 25% of the applicants. Since then, the hire rate of adjuncts to full-time professors has jumped from 50% ten years ago to 65% today.
Some higher education communities, such as Connecticut’s state university system, are not contracted to allow for advancement to a tenure track once you are a hired part-time faculty. The CSU union contract does allow “emergency hires” as full-time replacements in some cases. An emergency hiree can teach for no more than a consecutive, two-year stint before the union legally is obligated to treat them as a tenure track employee. After this point, they chose an applicant, usually not the emergency hiree, for a tenure track position.
The teaching experience at Yavapai College in Prescott, Ariz. is a far cry from those at both Oakton Community College and the four state universities of Connecticut. After earning a Ph.D. in medieval history, adjunct professor at Yavapai College, Melissa Bruninga-Matteau was forced to rely on food stamps to support her and her two children. According to her interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bruninga-Matteau does not understand how she became the prototype of someone on welfare.
“I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare,” she stated in Stacey Patton’s article, “The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps.”
Whether the reason be legislative cuts in funding, lower college attendance rate, or the fear of granting tenure in an uneasy economy, Bruninga-Matteau is one of many adjuncts with professional degrees struggling to support oneself, sometimes a family as well. According to the American Association of University Professors, full-time professors earn a majority of their income from their teaching while part-timers earn only about a fifth.
Although statistics show that adjuncts teach just the same, sometimes better, than the well paid, tenured professors in the classroom over, their retirement benefits, health insurance, and job security are lacking merit, or are altogether nonexistent. With almost half the higher education staff considered adjunct, and tuition costs on the rise, unions and activists alike will continue to push for adjuncts at CCSU and elsewhere to receive better access to benefits and a higher income based not on their title, but their skill.
