Category Archives: Contingent labor

The Olympian: ISU faculty billed for bad news

POCATELLO, Idaho – It must have been bad enough for some Idaho State University faculty members to open a letter informing them that they could be laid off. But then the bill came.

University spokesman Graham Garner said the postage due bills were the result of an error by the U.S. Post Office, the Idaho State Journal reported.

ISU, like other state schools, has to make cuts recently due to mandatory state budget holdbacks. It’s required by law to notify its adjunct professors of any potential layoffs – which it did in a letter sent to faculty members’ mailing addresses, Garner said.

The U.S. Post Office was supposed to charge the certified mail processing fee – about $5 per letter – to ISU’s mailing account. But Garner said the post office instead mistakenly billed the school the cheaper first-class postage rate, and then billed the professors for the extra cost. The university intended to cover the difference, Garner said.

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Inside Higher Ed: Defining Adjunct Rights

The American Association of University Professors is best known for its statements on tenure and academic freedom. In recent years, however, the association has asserted that its principles apply to those off the tenure track, and it has adopted specific guidelines about the treatment of adjuncts.

Today, the association will for the first time cite those standards on adjuncts’ right to fair consideration for reappointment to issue a report finding an institution — North Idaho College — in violation of the AAUP standards. The case involves a long-term adjunct who was denied reappointment following the college’s clash with her husband and a controversy in which some of her comments offended conservative students. The AAUP says she was denied appropriate due process in ways that endanger academic freedom.

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The Chronicle: AAUP Takes Up Case of Part-Time Professor Let Go in Idaho

A report by the American Association of University Professors on the case of a former adjunct instructor of English is based on the organization’s first investigation into alleged violations of its new rules regarding part-time professors.

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USA Today: Studies link part-time college faculty to worse education

It’s no secret that colleges and universities are relying increasingly on part-time instructors or other faculty who are neither tenured nor on track for tenure. But a flurry of recent studies draw troubling conclusions about what kind of impact that is having on the quality of a student’s education.

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Inside Higher Ed: Breadth of Adjunct Use and Abuse

The use of adjuncts is well known among academics, but many believe that these instructors are utilized primarily in certain areas (such as the humanities) or certain types of institutions (such as community colleges). But a report being released today by the American Federation of Teachers suggests that the breadth and depth of adjunct use is greater than many realize — such that they are teaching a majority of public college and university courses, and are a major force in a wide range of disciplines.

The report — “Reversing Course: The Troubled State of Academic Staffing and a Path Forward” — is designed to publicize the extent of adjunct use with a mind toward encouraging more colleges to either improve the pay they offer adjuncts or shift more of their positions to the tenure track. Along those lines, the AFT is releasing a new tool that allows colleges to calculate the costs of changing staffing policies. The goal is to show that modest changes may be possible — even in tight budget years like this one — and that over time, such changes could have a meaningful impact on the makeup of faculties and the compensation of adjuncts.

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Inside Higher Ed: Call to Arms for Adjuncts … From an Administrator

It’s not unheard of, at faculty gatherings, to hear colleges’ treatment of adjuncts compared to the way Wal-Mart treats its workers. On Monday, such a comparison was made at a most unlikely place: the annual meeting of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

“Wal-Mart is a more honest employer of part-time employees than are most colleges and universities,” said A.G. Monaco, senior human resources official at the University of Akron, and yet academics are “the ones screaming about how bad Wal-Mart is.” Academics “have to stop lying” about the way non-tenure-track professors are treated, he said.

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