FACE Talk

Canada has the right idea

There are times when we must look to our neighbors to the north for some positive inspiration. One such time happened this week in Ontario.

The Ontario government intends to introduce legislation that would extend collective bargaining rights to part-time college. Currently, the almost 16,000 part-time support and academic staff members at any of Ontario's 24 public colleges are barred from joining a union or engaging in collective bargaining. Ontario is the only province in Canada where it is still against the law for college part-time workers to unionize.

This is just one of many overhauls to collective bargaining at colleges, according to Chris Bentley, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. "In just four years, we've increased college funding by 30 percent after 12 years where funding went down. Now we're planning for the future, beginning with a review of the legislation governing on college labour relations."

Changes will be made following a review of the Colleges Collective Bargaining ACT (CCBA) and how the CCBA can meet its mandate to respond to changing student needs while supporting fair labour relations.

The State of Things

Here at FACE Talk we often make the argument, as do others, that contingent faculty do outstanding work and are committed to teaching and their institutions at a level that sometimes seems incommensurate with their working conditions.  You would think that employees who are treated the way that contingent faculty are at many institutions would be tempted to shirk their responsibilities--but that just isn't the case. 

Take for instance the latest posts by The Adjunct Professor over at Adjunct Professoring:  one deals with classroom dynamics and the other with getting students to talk.  Clearly AP is someone who loves the work, thinks carefully about teaching and looks for ways to improve and do the best by his/her students. 

But scroll down to a few posts to last week and you will see the other side of the issue when AP wasn't sure if a class would carry.

Here at FACE Talk we often make the argument, as do others, that contingent faculty do outstanding work and are committed to teaching and their institutions at a level that sometimes seems incommensurate with their working conditions.  You would think that employees who are treated the way that contingent faculty are at many institutions would be tempted to shirk their responsibilities--but that just isn't the case. 

Take for instance the latest posts by The Adjunct Professor over at Adjunct Professoring:  one deals with classroom dynamics and the other with getting students to talk.  Clearly AP is someone who loves the work, thinks carefully about teaching and looks for ways to improve and do the best by his/her students. 

But scroll down to a few posts to last week and you will see the other side of the issue when AP wasn't sure if a class would carry.

Calling All ABD's

Since so many union staffers I know were somewhere in the process of graduate work when they made the jump to union work, I hate to provide any resources that would help graduate students complete their studies.  Of course, I am *cough* joking and thought I would share this site I recently ran into which is devoted to helping graduate students. 

PhinisheD is a "discussion and support group for people trying to finish their dissertations or theses, and those who have been there."  The site offers a variety of discussion boards ranging from "on-topic" discussions about working on the Dis to "off-topic" discussions about how to stay in shape and keep your sanity.  I suppose it says something about the state of support and mentoring for graduate employees that this site appears to be flourishing.  Thoughts? 

Maybe Salaries should be $5.5 million?

“[A] man fit to occupy a chair in a university should be paid enough to enable him to live in decency and comfort, rearing and educating his children, and retiring in his old age to something other than absoluter penury”.

Sound familiar? This is something that could have been written about professors today; but in actuality this is a quote from an Associate Professor in 1905.  Brad DeLong discovered a hidden treasure when he found in the archives of the Atlantic Monthly “What Should College Professors Be Paid?” written by a professor anonymously identified as GHM. [DeLong also was nice enough to post the original article on his website…No subscription fee!]

Anyway, the professor reports that in 1905 the average college professor’s salary in the United States was about $2000. (A salary of $2000 would be the equivalent of $250,000 today) An amazing amount, but still he goes on to say that professors should be paid more and proceeds to itemize his expenses and how they are needed to uphold his professional and academic duties.

The First Step Is Recognition

Yesterday, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed Executive Order 7-13 establishing a Post-Secondary Quality Education Commission.  This is more exciting than it sounds because part of the work of this commission is aligned with the goals set forth by AFT's FACE campaign.

"We know we need solid information regarding the use and treatment of part-time faculty and graduate employees in our system to help us identify next steps toward meeting the goals of our FACE legislation" said Rob Wagner, AFT Oregon's Director of Political and Legislative Affairs. "We're happy that the Governor recognizes the importance of looking at this issue as a central part of the effort to determine what our system of higher education should look like in the future."

The commission is charged with developing a model for the Oregon higher education system. One part of that charge is to:

Study the impact of the use of part-time faculty and graduate student employees on program quality and student success, and recommend a consistent definition to describe adjunct, contingent and part-time faculty.

This is no small step.  For a state to recognize that developing a model system necessarily includes examining its staffing structure is remarkable.  More often than not, the focus is solely on costs and outcomes.  What's more, anyone who works on these issues knows how important consistent definitions are. Institutions love to use multiple categories and titles for faculty to make it less than clear what their hiring practices are over time. 

Establishing the Commission is a critical first step, but ensuring that all of the appropriate voices are heard will be an equally important step.  The Executive Order calls on the Commission to "solicit input from educators, education policy experts and others about the elements of the model," and to develop the model based on "research, data, public input and experience."

"You can be sure that our members will make their voices heard," comments Wagner. "They were there when we introduced the FACE legislation and lobbied for that bill and we will be active in this discussion as well."

We have no doubt about that--remember this?

More on AFT Oregon's efforts on FACE, including testimony from members at their legislative hearing March 29, 2007 can be found here.

The Value of Faculty

Three of my friends have recently landed full-time positions. One moved from the Seattle area to the East Coast; the second accepted a position with a local tribal college, and the third is the only one remaining in our state’s community and technical college system – he’ll just be teaching at another school.

While I’m happy for my colleagues, I’m once again stunned by the fact that our college has not yet recognized its loss. All three of these faculty members were actively involved in our writing program, and two even ran our Writing Center. Unfortunately, there are many who still believe that part-time faculty are easily replaced.

Hiring Spree at CUNY?

The New York Sun ran an article Monday touting CUNY’s hiring of 40 new full-time, tenure-track professors at City University  of New York College of Technology as a hiring spree. It’s a short news story, no doubt based on a CUNY press release. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it skimps on the details.

The article quotes CUNY Vice Chancellor of Communications Jay Hershenson who lists the benefits of hiring full-timers: "When you have full-time faculty on campus, they're by definition more involved in advisement, counseling, committee work, and curriculum.”

Hershenson also provided some statistics on CUNY’s academic workforce:

While I Wasn't Looking

Sometimes, there is just too much too keep up with out there.  Last week, PZ Meyers over Pharyngula started an excellent discussion about the number of graduate students in the biological sciences vs. the number of tenure-track faculty positions available (hint: there are more students, lots more students, than positions).  Okay it isn't quite that simple, but we often think of graduate student pipeline issues like this as limited to the humanities and social sciences, so the discussion is interesting particularly given the focus on the biological sciences.  So if, like me, you missed it, hop on over and check it out.

Familiar Numbers and Trends

The Chronicle of Higher Education is out with their annual Almanac issue (subscription) this week and it includes data on the percentage of full-time vs. part-time faculty through 2005.  Here is the bottom line:

Year	Full-time	Part-time
1987	66%	34%
1989	64%	36%
1991	65%	35%
1993	60%	40%
1995	59%	41%
1997	57%	43%
1999	57%	43%
2001	56%	44%
2003	54%	46%
2005	52%	48%

Within the full-time faculty cohort, CHE reports that barely half have tenure.  And of course, these numbers don't include the 300,000 some odd graduate employees that have teaching responsibilities at our colleges and universities.

I suppose these numbers are just becoming old news to anyone who has been following this trend, but we shouldn't just let them slip on by as something we already know.  This is truly a case of the "slow-boiling-frog" approach to moving to a predominantly contingent workforce without tenure.  We need to call our colleges, universities and state policymakers on that fact.  I, for one, see the two percentage point shift between 2003 to 2005 (putting us only 2 percentage points form a 50/50 workforce) as significant--politically if not statistically.  In short, these numbers should always be a reminder of what a large task we have to turn this trend around and we should share them with anyone who will listen.

Wait, what is my name?

As was mentioned last week in one of the FACE Talk postings, AFT had two advisory groups in town to discuss issues and topics relevant to their constituencies. These meetings are always beneficial, allowing everyone to sit around a table to talk about their lives, their triumphs and failures. While sitting in, listening to part-time/adjunct and full-time non-tenure track faculty members, one thing kept popping up in my head--it's amazing how diverse and varied the conditions are for our contingent faculty.

Now don't think, "Boy, how naive can she be". No, I am talking about how people identify themselves and what words are used to describe their positions. We had adjunct, part-time, instructor, lecturer, non-tenure, full-time, contingent, visiting, academic professional, tenured part-time, continuing appointments...I could go on but I won't. We basically had to have an agreed upon glossary before moving into discussions. This way we were all on the same page.

So what does this whole jumbled mess mean?