The bane of part-time faculty: satisfying work, lousy benefits

Part-time faculty are rallying for better benefits and professional recognition.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

Psychologist Ann Rosen Spector, PhD, puts in 13-hour days shuttling between her Philadelphia home, her downtown clinical psychology practice and the Rutgers University?Camden campus, where she teaches two courses a semester. She?s taught there 11 years.

She?s stayed with the teaching job because it hones her academic and teaching skills and, as she puts it, 'keeps me immersed in the literature.' But as her practice grows busier, she finds the teaching job ever harder to justify. Spector earns under $3,000 per course, she doesn?t get health benefits or merit raises and she?s employed contractually, meaning she lacks job security.

'This is farm worker treatment,' she says. 'When you?re hired as a part-timer, right away you?re a second-class citizen.'

Kelley Callahan, PsyD, another part-timer, divides her time between a part-time psychologist position at a Dayton, Ohio, child-services agency, an adjunct supervisory job at Wright State University?s School of Professional Psychology, and a weekend teaching job at Antioch University?s McGregor School because she likes the variety in her schedule.

Setting her own hours allows her to spend more time with her young daughter, she says. But Callahan also acknowledges the problems of serving as part-time faculty, such as the need to rely on her husband for health and retirement benefits.

Also, she says, part-timers sometimes find it hard to 'assert themselves as viable faculty members' because it?s not part of their jobs to participate in faculty committees that keep them fully informed about faculty policies and the like.

Part-timers, however, may be poised to assert themselves more because they?re the nation?s fastest growing faculty group, a trend that shows no sign of slowing. Two out of every five faculty members on college campuses today are part-time or adjunct faculty?double the number in the 1968 academic work force. And as their numbers swell, many part-timers have mounted local campaigns to improve the terms of their employment. Increasingly, they?re banding together, often represented by their local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), to lobby for improved salary, benefits and status.

Why the increase in adjuncts?

According to higher education administrators, universities are hiring more part-time and adjunct faculty because their budgets are tighter, fewer tenured professors are retiring, and hiring part-time people is less expensive than hiring full-timers in tenure-track positions. ('Adjunct' faculty are typically non-tenure-track part-time lecturers. The term 'part-time' describes adjuncts as well as a smaller group of tenure-track lecturers.)

Community colleges hire the most part-timers, largely because they don?t have research departments that require full-time staff. In fact, says psychologist Martha Ellis, PhD, a provost at Collin County Community College in Texas, many community colleges are scrambling to hire more part-time faculty. 'We?re losing them to industry,' she says.

Besides the obvious budgetary advantages of hiring part-timers, educators also cite pedagogical ones. If a psychologist divides her time between a clinical practice and teaching or supervision, for example, she brings a personal perspective on managed care to her lessons, says Leon Vandecreek, PhD, dean of Wright State?s School of Professional Psychology and a member of APA?s Board of Educational Affairs. 'A person with that kind of practice-related expertise is going to keep the curriculum fresh and current,' says Vandecreek.

Each semester, his professional school hires several adjuncts, among them Callahan, to pass on that sort of expertise to students. For their part, faculty have various reasons for doing part-time work.

Some enjoy the challenge of working a full-time job and teaching on the side; some teach a course or two to make time for raising their children. Others such as psychologist Mel Ciena, PhD, like the flexibility it gives them to pursue hobbies and side projects.

Ciena teaches two courses a semester at the University of San Francisco and spends the rest of his time disk jockeying at a dance club, writing a psychology textbook, traveling and writing a screenplay. 'I like to set my own deadlines, work on my own terms, and do a lot of different things that are equally important to me,' says Ciena. 'I need that balance in my life.'

Are they underappreciated?

But many adjuncts who aren?t teaching part time by choice?those who cobble together several teaching jobs as they wait to land a full-time appointment?are far less satisfied than Ciena.

In fact, faculty who hope to land full-time positions benefit from part-time employment the least, says psychologist Kathleen Barker, PhD, an associate professor at Medgar Evers College?City University of New York (CUNY), who studies part-time and contingent work and higher education staffing practices.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that more experience yields better jobs, a study by Barker suggests that the longer faculty are adjuncts, the harder it is to land a full-time position. 'The exploratory research suggests you?re stigmatized, ' says Barker. 'It?s a ?blame-the-victim? situation where adjuncts are seen as having something wrong with them instead of as being confined by the job market.'

In a 1994 survey of more than 100 university chairs and deans, Barker found that administrators were least likely to hire someone who?d taught part time for more than five years. She reports the results in her book, 'Contingent Work: American Employment Relations in Transition' (Cornell University Press, 1998).

Across academic fields, women are most likely to fall into this category of part-timers seeking full-time faculty positions, and more than half of part-timers say they ultimately seek tenured positions, says the AAUP?s director of research, Ernst Benjamin, PhD. Citing data from his analysis of the 1993 Study of Postsecondary Faculty, Benjamin also finds that slightly less than half of the study?s psychology faculty say they?re happy with their part-time status. (Physicians and nurses are the happiest; liberal arts faculty are the least happy.)

Some adjuncts won?t even include their part-time experiences on their resumes, says Rutgers University English instructor, Karen Thompson, chair of Committee G, AAUP?s National Committee on Part-time and Non-Tenure Track Appointments. Another problem adjuncts face, says Thompson, is competition from students who teach for free or retirees who volunteer to teach without pay.

This drives down salaries that are already low?between $1,200 and $3,000 a course?and jeopardizes part-timers? chances of securing benefits, she says. According to Thompson, volatile job security, limited or nonexistent benefits and low salaries pose problems for all part-timers, no matter how much the arrangement suits them.

Keith Hoeller, PhD, an instructor in philosophy and psychology at Green River Community College and Tacoma Community College near Seattle, says his contract-based employment means he can?t be sure whether he?ll teach from one semester to the next.

And he claims he isn?t paid for the work he does beyond teaching, like advising and curriculum development, or for the miles he racks up driving two hours a day. Locally, Hoeller has formed the Part-Time Faculty Association to lobby the state legislature for fairer employment terms, and he advises other part-timers to organize as well.

Rallying for status

Thus far, graduate students who teach part time are better organized than part-time faculty at advocating for improved benefits and teaching compensation, says Vinny Tirelli, an activist at CUNY. But fully credentialed part-timers are stepping up their efforts, he says. Earlier this year he organized the Second National Conference of Part-time, Adjunct, Non-Tenure Track and GTA faculty, which has spawned an ongoing listserv.

To date, part-time faculty can?t claim their own national organization, but Tirelli says they can join local chapters of the three big education faculty associations?AAUP, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

Through local organizing at CUNY, for example, part-time faculty have won eligibility for health benefits if they teach two or more courses a semester.

In Washington state, they?ve also won health benefits and pay raises and the Minnesota Community College Faculty Association has landed improved job security?in the form of guaranteed continuing appointments?for part-time instructors who?ve taught 50 percent to 80 percent of a full-time courseload for four consecutive years.

Such successes point to the potential for part-timers to better their employment prospects and to be heard.

You can?t 'assume that the university will value you,' says Spector. Adds Callahan, 'You learn that you?ve got to be assertive, to be your own advocate.'