home > part-timers/adjuncts > Chief article
 

home
about us/contact us
benefits/services
calendar
Clarion
chapters
committees
  contract
 document/data/archive
grievances/rights
health & safety
links
membership/dues info
part-timers/adjuncts
pensions
photo gallery
political/legislative
psc news
retirees
 who's who in the psc

welfare fund web site

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

Ingrid Hughes taught a full-time courseload at the City University of New York Workers Education Center for five years. Her evaluations were always positive. There were no complaints from her students. But just weeks before the semester was set to begin, she was told she was being replaced.

Uphill Struggle for PSC

Ms. Hughes had no recourse, because she is one of about 10,000 part-time instructors teaching at CUNY. They make up 60 percent of the faculty throughout the system and teach about half of the classes. They have no seniority rights, are often paid about a third of what full-time Professors make, and many of them must traverse the city every week, cobbling together enough classes by teaching on up to three different campuses.

The union that represents them, the Professional Staff Congress, has been battling to bring up their wages, but with the university system so dependent upon their relatively inexpensive services, adjuncts are aware that improving their lot will take enormous pressure on CUNY in the current round of contract negotiations.

"I like teaching at CUNY," said Ms. Hughes, who is a writing instructor at Borough of Manhattan and Bronx Community Colleges. "The students are really smart but often poorly educated, and you can make a real difference."

But after teaching for almost 15 years, she is frustrated that she has no regular schedule and no guarantee each semester that she will have a job.

Most adjunct assignments are made in the two weeks before a semester begins. Some instructors don't find out until the day before their classes what topic they will teach and on which campus.

"It's very, very advantageous for them to pay us so poorly," Ms. Hughes said. "They fought very hard when the union demanded a pay raise for us. They make a huge savings on us, just huge."

The problem faced by part-time instructors is not isolated to CUNY. In 1960, about three quarters of all college faculty members had full-time positions or were on a tenure track. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college instructors nationally hold full-time or tenure-track jobs.

The American Federation of Teachers, spurred by the activism of PSC leaders, has launched a legislative initiative to try to improve pay and benefits for part-time instructors and to raise the contingent of full-time professors to 75 percent on campuses nationwide.

Legislation has been introduced in 14 states, and a coalition of higher-education advocates and unions in New York are working on drafting a bill for the state. Last week the PSC mobilized on CUNY campuses as a part of a national Campus Equity Week to highlight the plight of adjuncts.

Some Recent Progress

In the union's last round of negotiations, it was able to win a side letter that committed CUNY to hiring 100 part-timers into full-time teaching positions.

PSC President Barbara Bowen believes the issue has to be addressed legislatively and at the bargaining table to reverse the trend. "What CUNY has done," she said, "is to make adjuncts the mainstay of teaching without structuring their employment as such."

But CUNY officials say they share the goal of increasing the number of permanent professors.

"Overall our goal of enhancing the full-time faculty at our university has been our highest priority for many years," said CUNY spokesman Michael Arena.

He said that the university has made progress in the last few budgets towards its stated goal of reaching 70 percent full-time faculty. "There has been a net increase in full-time faculty, but we are not near the goal," Mr. Arena said. "As we move towards that goal, there certainly would be opportunities created for adjuncts to move into the full-time ranks."

Health Benefits Trigger

Adjuncts who teach two or more classes for three consecutive semesters get health coverage, something several adjuncts praised as an important benefit of the job. About half of the adjunct faculty teaches two courses or less.

Part-time instructors are also entitled to join the Teachers Retirement System pension plan and have access to some professional development funds. They can receive tuition waivers if they teach two courses in the same department for 10 consecutive semesters.

Carl Lindskoog teaches two classes at Queens College. One is a U.S. history survey course with about 60 students. The other is a course in U.S. labor history with about 30 students. His official pay scale is $58.68 an hour, which sounds like a gig anyone would want. But he gets paid only for his actual hours of class time, plus one administrative hour, which gives him about $1,650 per month, or $12,300 for the year, before taxes.

He admits that it's nice to have summers off, but says that the pay scale doesn't come close to reflecting the actual hours he puts in, which he estimates at about 20 weekly, once grading and prep time is accounted for. During exam periods, with 90 students to grade, the workload increases markedly. "I do essay exams, because I believe that's the best way to teach history," he said. "Many of us don't really scale back. We accept that we're doing tons of work, but also don't want to sell students short."

No Security?

But just as concerning to Mr. Lindskoog, who is also a full-time graduate student, are his prospects for finding a full-time job once he gets his Ph.D. "We're concerned about low wages," he said, "but we're also concerned there won't be any secure, full-time jobs because more universities are going towards part-time or contingent faculty."

Neither the instructors nor the union are pushing to get rid of adjuncts altogether. Ms. Bowen said the aim in New York is to get the ratio to about 70 percent full-time and 30 percent part-time in line with CUNY's goal. "Adjuncts have always enriched college curricula when they are actually used as adjuncts," she said. She gave the example of a poet who teaches a course on literature or a lawyer who teaches a course at a law school. "Then the students have the benefit of the experience of a practitioner," she said. "Then the person is truly an adjunct to the academic program of a college."

Some of the complaints of adjuncts are smaller issues, but ones that contribute to their contingent status and feeling of precariousness. Some campuses only allot office space if part-timers teach more than one class on the campus. Most adjuncts share their spaces with at least a dozen other part-timers, and some campuses house up to 50 adjuncts in one room.

Part-timers are not given official campus e-mail addresses, so they must use their personal accounts to communicate with their students. And if they go a semester in which they only teach one course, they lose their health insurance, which adds more urgency to the scramble at the beginning of each semester to make sure the courses they have applied to teach haven't gotten dropped at the last minute.

Ruben Rangel, who teaches reading and English as a Second Language, recalled the semester when he taught in three different boroughs, at LaGuardia College in Queens, at City College in Manhattan and at Bronx Community College. "I definitely get maximum use out of my monthly MetroCard," he said with a laugh.

Mr. Rangel grew up as a farm-worker and said after working in many fields, he settled on academia as a way to give to the community while also being able to have a decent life. He got his master's at City College and was surprised by what he found when he began to teach. "I had a misconception of teaching at a university," he said. "I believed it would not be that type of exploitation. I was surprised that CUNY would have a similar attitude. We are paid with the same approach as piecework."

Part-Time Pay

He estimates that he works about 36 hours a week on average, and more than that at peak times. At BMCC, he is required to give his class of 30 students 12 hours of homework per week, which must be graded. This year he expects to make about $25,200 if he keeps a similar schedule next semester.

In the past, when his classes were changed to ones that he had never taught before, he spent hours making up the syllabus and getting acquainted with the material in the week before classes started, all of which was unpaid work.

Mr. Rangel says he is committed to teaching at CUNY and sees the fight for better working conditions as much for his own livelihood as the quality of education he is able to give to his students.

"We are part-time workers with a full-time work-load, or full-time instructors with part-time pay," he said. "Either way, it's something that has to change."

Republished from 10/2/07 issue of