The injustice of part-time UNC faculty

If you think the life of a college instructor in North Carolina is glamorous, you don’t see the entire picture. A glamorous career comes with a competitive salary, job security and the feeling of being valued. Unfortunately, for a huge number of teachers in the UNC system, the opposite is true.

Consider this – especially if you are a high school student preparing for college or a parent helping to pay tuition or a state taxpayer: Over the last 10 years, in-state tuition has gone up 87 percent. But many N.C. college instructors need public assistance in order to make ends meet. Just where is your tuition money going?

Pay levels have been stagnant (and for part-timers, often too low to live on). Classes are larger, and contract terms are shorter. Teachers, particularly part-timers, lack job security. Paid by the course, these teachers usually receive no benefits, such as health insurance. They are also called “contingent faculty” or “adjuncts.” While many have the same credentials as full-time faculty, they are paid far less.

Demoralizing

This is not a new problem – it has been going on since the 1970s, when they were nicknamed “freeway flyers” and “road scholars” because they had to teach at several schools in order to earn the equivalent of a full-time salary. Today’s adjunct teachers feel similarly demoralized. Sympathetic full-time but untenured teachers fear reprisals if they speak out.

It’s all part of the corporatization that has been creeping like kudzu over the UNC system for the past 20 years. Adjunct faculty who educate our young people at public universities can barely get by financially. Yet administrators make huge salaries.

Corporatization in higher education demands teachers at the lowest price. The result is a huge labor issue with moral and academic implications. Part-time teachers can comprise between 4 percent and 72 percent of an institution’s faculty members. At some schools, adjunct faculty account for as many as 40 percent to 50 percent of the teaching staff. While some institutions may have low overall percentages of part-time faculty, some of their departments offer undergraduate courses taught primarily by contingent labor. Last year’s statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show that if low-paid college instructors worked a 40-hour week for 10 months, their annual salary would still average only $32,000. And contingent faculty make even less.

This is why concerned faculty, statewide, are joining the Faculty Forward movement – and other workers’ groups nationwide – to mobilize Thursday. On that day, there will be a panel discussion at noon at N.C. Central University. Then at 5 p.m., a major rally at the McDonald’s in downtown Durham, at 102 Morgan Street, will call attention to the national issue of workers’ rights.

If a school knowingly and blatantly mistreats its faculty, how does it treat its students?

At a college fair held recently in Raleigh, I asked admissions reps from many colleges about the percentage of contingent labor on their faculty. Most had no idea. Those who could tell what percentage was part-time did not know whether they were graduate assistants, professionals teaching a class as an extra activity or teachers hired at the last minute. Admissions reps need to know this information and to be honest about it. Members of the public – students, guidance counselors and parents – need to ask. These questions will make admissions reps uncomfortable. That’s why you need to ask.

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "The injustice of part-time UNC faculty."