Ah, the 2013 Special Salary Issue of The National Education Association’s Higher Education Advocate
is out!
Therein you will find out
a lot about what's happening in higher ed, like this, "public
colleges and universities are getting shortchanged," and this: "gender gap shows no
sign of shrinking."
You know, new ideas and
new information that will empower you to think in a creative new way about how
to manage the challenges of the future. My favorite has to be
this:
Contingent faculty members who provide instruction without the benefit
of tenure or permanent employment
make up a significant
portion of the teaching force
in postsecondary education.
You know, that just makes
sense to me, and it's nice to see what's just been a hunch of mine
authoritatively established as the real McCoy. I mean, I know I've provided
instruction without benefit of tenure, or even—it's embarrassing to admit
this—without even the protection afforded by plain old permanent employment.
And I’ve done it a lot.
What can I say? It's just
the heat of the moment, I suppose, and my own personal weakness—I love to
teach.
What is a Significant Portion?
So, how many contingent
faculty have been providing instruction in a risky manner? Readers will want to know. However, I'm
unable to locate any numbers or percentages in NEA’s Special Salary Issue.
We do learn some
things:
1) The majority of
contingent faculty appointments are part-time!
2) The percentage of
full-time contingent faculty has been growing!
3) The median pay for a
3-hour class is $2700!
Fifty Shades of Community College
Look, I’m busy, so I'll
just look at the first college on each state list—that’ll be all community
colleges—and we’ll see about that significant portion thing. What I’ve got for
you here is, as usual, from the Modern Language Association’s wonderful Academic Workforce Data Center, which, as you all know, uses data from the pretty wonderful Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to tell us what percent of
faculty the nation’s colleges and universities are are non-tenure stream.
What makes the Academic Workforce Date Center better than the IPEDS itself is that you can get at the data in a wink, whereas at IPEDS itself you need at least two winks and a long nap.
What makes the Academic Workforce Date Center better than the IPEDS itself is that you can get at the data in a wink, whereas at IPEDS itself you need at least two winks and a long nap.
Some rules: in what follows, the percentages are percentages, of total faculty, for those that are rode hard and put away wet, in the higher ed game, every day. That's the percentage
of that institution’s total faculty who are adjunct or contingent, or non-tenure
stream, or as I sometimes say, adcon. Now, remember too, as NEA just told you, most of these “without benefit
of tenure or permanent employment” folk are part-timers.
So, Alabama? First on the list is Alabama Southern Community College,
and there you’ve got adcons at 50% of total faculty. That's almost all
part-time, which is the usual pattern: any exceptions, places where most of the
adjunct/contingent faculty are NOT part-time, I’ll note.
Alaska
Prince
William Sound Community College. 82%
Arizona
Arizona Western
College. 100%
Arkansas
Arkansas
northeastern College. 100%
(More
than half of these are full-timers.)
California
Allan
Hancock College. 75%
Colorado
Aims
Community College. 100%
Connecticut
Asnuntuck
community College. 87%
Delaware
Delaware
Technical and Community College-Owens. 100%
District of Columbia N/A
(This is sad. You know how
they don’t have any representation
down
there? Well, they don’t have community colleges either.)
Florida
Brevard
Community College. 79%
Georgia
Abraham
Baldwin Agricultural College. 54%
Hawaii
Hawaii
Community College. 55%
Illinois
Black
Hawk College. 100%
Indiana
Ivy
Tech Community College-Bloomington. 100%
Iowa
Des
Moines Area Community College. 100%
(Looks
like these contingents are almost 100%
full-time. That's pretty unusual, isn't it?)
full-time. That's pretty unusual, isn't it?)
Kansas
Allen
County Community College. 80%
Kentucky
Ashland
Community and Technical College. 76%
Louisiana
Baton
Rouge Community College. 99%
(This was second on the
Louisiana list, because I couldn't find
any info on the first,
which was Acadiana Tech-Lafayette. At
Baton
Rouge they're almost all full-timers.)
Maine
Central
Maine Community College. 100%
Maryland
Allegany
College of Maryland. 64%
Massachusetts
Berkshire
Community College. 73%
Michigan
Alpena
Community College. 100%
Minnesota
Alexandria
Technical and Community College. 49%
(So what's with the
college president here? That's about
what the percent of adcons
is at Fordham
University.
Oh
well, I'm just doing community colleges now.)
Mississippi
Coahoma
Community College. 100%
(About
2/3 are full-time)
Missouri
Crowder
College. 100%
Montana
Dawson
Community College. 17%
Hold on a Minute:
Dawson Community College?
That's right—83% of the Dawson Community College faculty are genuine tenure track or tenured full-time faculty! There's only 30 of
them, sure, but still. Another 10 points maybe, that almost looks like New York University upside down. Dang.
(You know, New York University President John Sexton could probably not have been reached
for comment on this issue. That's just a hunch. But, hell, I probably couldn't get the janitor,
or somebody from the faculty senate over there to comment on this article.)
Nebraska
Central
Community College. 100%
Nevada
College
of Southern Nevada. 73%
New Hampshire
Great
Bay Community College. 100%
New Jersey
Atlantic
Cape Community College. 78%
New Mexico
Central
New Mexico Community College. 100%
New York
Adirondack
Community College. 64%
North Carolina
Alamance
Community College. 100%
North Dakota
Bismarck
State College. 66%
Ohio
Belmont
Technical College. 100%
Oklahoma
Carl
Albert State College. 100%
Oregon
Blue
Mountain Community College. 72%
Pennsylvania
Bucks
County Community College. 75%
Rhode Island
Community
College of Rhode Island. 60%
South Carolina
Aiken
Technical College. 100%
South Dakota
Lake
Area Technical Institute. 100%
(Most
of these are full-timers.)
Tennessee
Chattanooga
State Community College. 71%
Texas
Alvin
Community College. 63%
Utah
Davis
Applied Technology College. 100%
Vermont
Vermont
Technical College. 54%
West Virginia
Blue
Ridge Community and Technical College. 100%
Wisconsin,
Blackhawk
Technical College. 76%
Wyoming
Casper
College. 45%
So, there you have it, for a
bunch of community colleges, anyway. Certainly does look as if you've got a significant portion of the teaching force there providing
out-of-wedlock instruction, I guess you might call it, without the blessings and the benefits of the real thing. That's not good. I mean, water on the side two times and no whiskey in sight?
On the other hand, I’m not one to complain, and what’s good for the goose and so-forth adds up this: there must also be a pretty substantial portion in some of these places—I mean, just you look at the numbers yourself—who are in stable, long-term relationships with their colleges, marked by affection and mutual respect and so-forth, perhaps not in a constant state of romantic elation because that's not always to be expected after the intoxicating transport of early courtship, but settled and happy and looking forward to a long life together so long as that blessing may flow, for evidence of which I ask you to please see this recent and touching PBS News Hour report:
On the other hand, I’m not one to complain, and what’s good for the goose and so-forth adds up this: there must also be a pretty substantial portion in some of these places—I mean, just you look at the numbers yourself—who are in stable, long-term relationships with their colleges, marked by affection and mutual respect and so-forth, perhaps not in a constant state of romantic elation because that's not always to be expected after the intoxicating transport of early courtship, but settled and happy and looking forward to a long life together so long as that blessing may flow, for evidence of which I ask you to please see this recent and touching PBS News Hour report:
Colleges and Universities see Graying Workforce
Holding on to Coveted Positions
You tell me if that’s not
so. Go ahead. And while you’re at it, go tell New Faculty Majority the same,
and maybe even the Adjunct Project. They all want to hear some sort of sad sack kind of
thing, sure.
But listen up. As to NEA’s
role in all this? I say any union that’s been able all these years to keep
Dawson Community College a whopping 83% full-time tenure-track faculty, well,
that’s a labor organization been doing something right!
Now, of course, I'm no
statistician, and there may be a reason, or a couple or three even, for some of those
figures not coming in at that high Dawson bar, such as:
1) Most adjunct/contingent faculty at community colleges are part-time by choice and don't need the money anyway, being instructors of welding or merger law, purely for the love of it, and controlling great ironworks, or shipyards, maybe, or legal practices, or even holding down one or two vital government positions.
2) They've inherited great wealth and are yearning to give back, or some such thing. Some of them, the women mostly, just can't help it, either, please remember, because of their natural giving dispositions, and since they're mostly well enough off anyway, having married vice-presidents or various members of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, we could leave them alone and strictly out of any future planning on this matter.
3) Might be that my sample
is flawed, and, in fact, most NEA-affiliated community colleges will turn out, on restudy, only some 17% adcon, like Dawson Community College, and then most of those could be yoga instructors maybe, and highly
appreciative of all forms of
flexibility which, as we know, is an often praised virtue of this form of
employment.
4) It could be worse, and
probably will get so in not so long, what with the MOOCS and all, and so
there's other things to worry about.
All of which, then, taken
together, would seem to require further collection of facts, the study and
analysis thereof, the subsequent production and making available of
reports, discussion of which, being invited in this or that forum, will perhaps
allow movement on identified fronts to be contemplated in a mature and serious
manner, a thing for which I'm sure we all of us devoutly yearn.
