NEA, IPEDS, MLA, CLE Rank Dawson Community College Higher than NYU

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. 

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?)

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: 

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. 

The End of Slavery: What Can the NOTTSPASMS Learn?

In recent days, by which I mean for years and years and years, I've been reading about a recent trend—forty years or so—in higher education, recently: reliance on low-paid, low-or-no benefit "adjuncts" or "contingents" or just "non-traditional-tenure-stream, part-time, sort-of, mostly sorts," or NOTTSPASMS as they are known to the cognoscenti. (You are now among their number, congratulations!) 

Women in the Seraglio thought it was all Cool, No Problem, until Recently

And so, I thought I'd have a look today at a similar problem, and the social movement that formed around it, and how it was realized, first off, that there was actually a problem—super important first step—and how the problem was solved by rigorous historical analysis, better marketing, and the heroic actions of a great man.

It's slavery I have in mind, sure!

Now, as you know, in the beginning, when slavery first came into the new world with brave English people who were fleeing religious oppression, slavery was pretty much ok, because many of the slaves were only part-time for the colonists anyway, and had, as their main full-time slave positions the task of staying alive.

But, when one of the recently established great newspapers of that time, The Wall Street Liberator, reported that most of the part-time slaves were becoming full-time slaves, and would soon be clamoring for ruinously expensive health care, Abraham Lincoln stepped in, "freed" the slaves—which technically made them ineligible for unemployment benefits—and then gave them all forty acres and two mules and sent them back to Africa.

And in Africa, of course, they were able to challenge and destroy the feeble inroads made by European imperialists there, and establish robust market-based democratic states: yes, those very same plucky little nations that came to our aid so effectively, recently, in both World Wars and, sort of more recently, during our campaign to free Grenada from communist aggression.

The very same. 

So, that's a happy ending, of course, very much, and it's the sort of thing that should inspire us all. It didn't take much more than 250 years, tops, and it couldn't have gone more smoothly. But what about more recent social movements, like the fight for women's rights and gender-equality?

Let's have a look.

As every schoolchild knows, there was no gender inequity at all, in the beginning, because as hunter-gatherers we didn't have things like real estate and automobiles and blended whiskey and refrigerators, and without those things, what's the point?

However, after the plow was discovered—silly, there it was all along!—that changed, because we could grow and store lots of food and that allowed some men, if they killed off enough of the other men, to build tastefully furnished seraglios in which great numbers of attractive women could be housed and entertained.

And, entertained they were!

The women were taken care of and just generally fussed over by the loyal eunuchs, who provided them with delicious foods and snazzy pajama sets—gifts from the big man, the Khan, the Chief, the Boss, the Chairman of the Board, who didn't bother the girls a whole lot, by the way, because, first, there were so many of them, and, second, because he was naturally gone a lot, doing some maintenance slaying or other vital governance chore. So that worked very, very well. 

Until recently.

Incredibly, and recently too, a major newspaper, The Ball Street Journal, has discovered a mysterious new recent trend. Many of these women, just yesterday so pleased with the seraglio and its plush attractions? They have left these nests of luxury. And they're working!

Yes, I said working, and for cash money or the equivalent, at jobs of real work! Laying track, adjuncting, slaying the foe, buying and selling things. And what's more, they're doing all this for about a dime on the dollar of what men are getting to do these exact same jobs of work!

What does this mean? Do they want to be doing that? Do they like it that much? Why? Don't they want to go back where they came from? What the hell's going on? Can we get the men to work for a dime on the dollar too? Are the women negatively impacting the ratio of this to that, where "this" means what I think's good for civilization and where "that" means do-as-you're-told-and-shut-up?

Who knows? And yet, although these are important questions, we just don't have the answers. 

We need data. And that, I think, should help us in thinking about how we should deal with this sudden NOTTSPASMs "problem." Maybe it's not a problem at all. Maybe there's somewhere we should send them all off to, who knows?

Maybe you don't see the connection here? Well, again, see, we need to study it. 

You don't want to run off all half-cocked into this kind of business, do you? Like they did, say, at a recent MLA conference in Boston, or as they do routinely over at New Faculty Majority, or on their blog, or at The Adjunct Project, or at the Delphi Project, or COCAL. Try to know something before you open your mouth, ok? Better for everybody