I was hired in 2010 to teach at Hostos Community College and every semester is a wait and see adventure, because I don’t really know if I will have enough students for my courses. To date, I have not been able to teach any summer classes, because at least in the last two summers, my classes have been cancelled at the last minute. I think the threshold for registered and paid students at Hostos is high, 10, I think. This past summer I had 7 students registered, but that is too low so the weekend before the class was to start, it was cancelled.
I have generally had some good luck the last few Fall and Spring semesters teaching at least one or two classes at Hostos since I teach POL 101. The second class is crucial because before I became a doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2012, I had to teach a second class to be able to get the health insurance through PSC.
Since I became a student at the GC, I have had a terrible time getting paid on time at the beginning of the year. This has been largely due to the fact that Hostos needs to transfer my payroll to the GC because of the NYSHP insurance for doctoral students. Hostos blames the GC and the GC blames Hostos, but in the end I lose out since for the last 3 semesters I have not been paid until the beginning of October for classes I start to teach at the end of August. This is not just an issue of job security, but also one of life security, as I have to wait to pay my bills, I have to save up my pennies for groceries, etc. It is an example of the low disregard adjuncts are held in by CUNY.
