FACE/AFT: Western Michigan Instructors and Adjunct Faculty Vote Union
Today the instructors and adjunct faculty at Western Michigan University overwhelmingly voted for the Professional Instructors Organization (PIO) to represent them. The Michigan Employment Relations Commission counted the votes in Lansing this morning and announced that the final vote tally was 207 to 29.
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Posted in Organizing, Unions
Tagged adjuncts, Collective bargaining, Organizing, Western Michigan U
Inside Higher Ed: Oregon to Adopt Union-Backed Principles on Part Timers
The Oregon Senate and House have now passed (with gubernatorial approval expected) legislation to codify principles of the Faculty and College Excellence Campaign of the American Federation of Teachers, which aims to improve the working conditions of faculty members and to push colleges to hire more tenure-track professors. Under the Oregon legislation, public colleges and universities will be required to report on the make-up of their faculties — something faculty groups say is essential for drawing attention to and changing hiring patterns. Further, some part timers will be able to gain eligibility for health insurance based on work at multiple colleges, not just one.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Working conditions
Tagged adjuncts, Oregon, Unions, Working conditions
The Chronicle News Blog: Oregon Set to Adopt Legislation That Helps Adjunct Faculty Members
The governor of Oregon is expected to sign a bill that includes principles of the American Federation of Teachers’ Faculty and College Excellence campaign. The legislature approved the bill over the weekend, as the State Senate voted unanimously to make Oregon the first state to enact such a law.
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Posted in Contingent labor
The Chronicle: Adjunct and Tenure-Track Professors Need One Another, Say Speakers at AAUP Meeting
Washington — Tenure-track faculty members and their adjunct brethren don’t have to be enemies, according to a paper presented here today during a conference held concurrently with the American Association of University Professors’ annual meeting.
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Tagged AAUP, adjuncts, Contingent labor, Organizing, Unions
The Chronicle: For Adjuncts, Stitching Together Part-Time Jobs Into Full-Time Pay
Washington — How can part-time adjunct professors cobble together enough jobs to get full-time pay, all while staying put at one institution?
By teaching and doing student-service work — such as developing courses, advising, and serving as a mentor — on a fee-per-service basis, said Treseanne Ainsworth, an adjunct who recently got a full-time non-tenure-track appointment at Boston College.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, part-time faculty, Salary/Economic Benefits
AFT/FACE: Two Part-time Faculty Unions Form in New York
In back-to-back elections this spring, part-time/adjunct faculty teaching at two private colleges, the Manhattan School of Music and Cooper Union, have voted to unionize. The new unions are affiliated with the New York State United Teachers/AFT/NEA.
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Posted in Organizing
Tagged adjuncts, AFT, Contingent labor, Cooper Union, Manhattan School of Music, Organizing, Unions
The Chronicle: For Adjuncts Only: A New Literary Magazine Denies Tenure
For once, it pays to be an adjunct. Well, wordriver, a new literary magazine, doesn’t actually pay its contributors, but tenured or tenure-track professors need not apply.
Beth McDonald an adjunct professor of English at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, has spent years trying to think of a way to spotlight the literary work of adjunct instructors. She and Susan Summers, a member of the English department’s support staff, found a way this April, when the first issue of a magazine they expect to publish annually came out.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged adjuncts, Publications, publishing, Research
FACE: Michigan State Nontenure-Track Faculty Go Union
AFT Michigan has added another notch to its belt, as nontenure-track faculty at Michigan State University voted by a two-to-one margin for representation. The new union, the Union of Nontenure-Track Faculty (UNTF), will represent 650 part-time and full-time nontenure-track faculty on MSU’s East Lansing campus. The mail-in ballot election was overseen by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission and the votes were counted May 29. The final tally was 240-113.
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Posted in Organizing
Tagged adjuncts, Michigan State U, Organizing, Unions
Inside Higher Ed: The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job
Year by year, various federal data sets are released, and document the steady growth of adjunct positions and decline of tenure-track jobs in the academic work force.
In an attempt to draw more attention to these shifts over time, the American Federation of Teachers is today releasing a 10-year analysis of the data, showing just how much the tenure-track professor has disappeared. The overall number of faculty and instructor slots grew from 1997 to 2007, but nearly two-thirds of that growth was in “contingent” positions — meaning those off of the tenure track. Over all, those jobs increased from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters of instructional positions.
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Posted in Job market, Tenure & Promotion
Tagged adjuncts, AFT, Contingent labor, Job market, reports, tenure
The Chronicle: Bucking the Trend, St. John’s U. Converts Instructors Into Tenure-Track Professors
Scholars who teach composition, a staple on the schedule of many a college freshman, often wind up stringing together a series of adjunct teaching jobs while keeping an eye out for that first step on the golden track to tenure. So it is easy to see why Roseanne Gatto marvels at her good fortune. She is not quite finished working on her dissertation but has almost finished her first year as an assistant professor of writing at St. John’s University. “This was huge for me,” says Ms. Gatto.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Faculty
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, St John's U, tenure
Courier: Part-Time Instructors Will Be Affected Most by Class Cuts
The reduction of this year’s summer intersession due to budget cuts is not only affecting students, but faculty as well. Many PCC part-time professors will see their hours decrease dramatically, with some even being out of jobs completely.
“Some part-time faculty will be losing their jobs,” said Roger Marheine, president of the Faculty Association. “Others will have the amount of classes they teach cut in half.”
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, Job cuts
Inside Higher Ed: MLA Urges Chairs to Focus on Adjunct Issues
The Modern Language Association is sending a letter to all English and foreign language department chairs urging them to organize discussions and activism to draw attention to the treatment of adjuncts. The letter follows on both reports and policy positions issued by the MLA, and urges discussions with department members and administrators, publicizing “best practices” on the use of non-tenure-track faculty members (including minimum per course payments), urging the conversion of part-time positions to full-time and so forth. The letter also urges chairs to raise these issues when they sit on external review panels on other campuses. “Especially in these difficult economic times, we must vigorously make the case for the relevance of an excellent humanities education,” the letter says. “Students need to be multiply literate, flexible, keen in their interpretive capacities, and prepared to change career direction several times over the course of their working lives. They deserve well-trained and adequately paid faculty members who, working under good conditions, are committed to teaching and learning, have time to prepare classes and provide adequate feedback to students, and have opportunities and support for professional development and advancement. Those students are our future. And those who stand before them in the classroom are our future as well.”
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, MLA
The Chronicle: 2-Year Colleges Can Win Over Adjuncts With Benefits, Study Suggests
A new study of community-college faculty members suggests that offering adjuncts benefits like dental insurance does a lot to keep them showing up to work with a smile.
Adjunct faculty members who receive dental, health, disability, or life insurance are not only more likely to feel satisfied with their benefits packages—as would be expected—but they are also substantially more likely to feel satisfied with their salaries than are other adjuncts earning the same amount, the study found.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, community colleges, Contingent labor, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle News Blog: Marquette U. Faculty Calls on University to Focus on Adjunct Equity
Marquette University’s Faculty Council has issued a report urging the university to focus on its use of adjuncts, which the report says “risks engendering an institutional dependency on the exploitation of adjunct labor.”
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, Equity, Marquette U
The Chronicle: Labor Leaders Call for Collective Efforts to Reduce Reliance on Adjuncts
The strain on university budgets from the economic crisis should serve as a catalyst for faculty unions and college administrators to build more mutual trust so they work together to reverse higher education’s reliance on adjunct labor, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said here on Monday.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Inside Higher Ed: New Idea on Grad Students, Unions
New York University has been the site of a historic breakthrough for the push to unionize graduate teaching assistants — and a bitter strike to preserve the union, which ended in failure, without collective bargaining. NYU administrators are now floating an idea that would give graduate students the right to join the university’s adjunct union.
The idea is linked to improvements NYU is considering in doctoral students’ funding packages. Currently, students receive five years of support, but some of the support is linked to teaching for two or four semesters. The NYU plan would end the teaching requirement. Graduate students would still be encouraged to teach, but any teaching assignments would be paid on top of their fellowships. For those assignments, they would be treated as adjuncts, and covered by NYU’s adjunct union.
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Posted in Organizing
Tagged adjuncts, Collective bargaining, Contingent labor, NYU, Organizing, TAs, Unions
Inside Higher Ed: The Part-Time Satisfaction Gap
SAN DIEGO — If community colleges want to make an impact on the job satisfaction of adjuncts, it’s time to focus on benefits. That was one conclusion of a study of the job satisfaction of part-time faculty members at two-year institutions, presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
The study — by Paul D. Umbach of North Carolina State University and Ryan Wells of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — was based on a national database of the attitudes of more than 5,700 community college faculty members at nearly 300 institutions. Umbach said it was important to examine adjunct job satisfaction because so many community colleges depend on part timers to teach a large share of courses, and because adjuncts are so diverse. With some part timers not relying on their teaching jobs economically, but others totally relying on colleges as employers, colleges need a better sense of just what adjuncts think about their jobs, Umbach said.
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged adjuncts, community colleges, Contingent labor, job satisfaction, part-time faculty
Inside Higher Ed: ‘Leave-Proofing’ the Faculty
Tenure-track jobs are harder than ever to find, with the economic mess prompting many colleges to grow even more cautious about hiring anyone on the tenure track. Tenure-track openings are being put on hold. Searches are being called off every day. Many who worry that higher education has created a faculty of two tiers — the privileged tenured class and the overused and abused adjuncts — have been told that this year is simply not the year in which to promote change.
In this environment, Denison University might seem an unlikely institution to bolster the ranks of its tenure-track faculty. A liberal arts college in Ohio, Denison has never abandoned the centrality of tenure-track lines — and typically uses adjuncts only to replace those professors who are on leave. But now Denison is embarking a plan that will replace many of those adjunct hires with permanent, tenure-track lines, and as a result will soon be conducting searches for 12 tenure-track jobs in liberal arts disciplines — hiring that will lead to real faculty growth beyond the 200 tenure-track and tenured faculty members at the university today.
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Posted in Tenure & Promotion
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, Denison University, job security, Tenure & Promotion
The New York Times: Parsons Faculty Is Cut Amid Protests by Artists
A dozen members of the fine-arts faculty at Parsons the New School for Design have been told that they will not be teaching in the department in the fall. The move has ignited further conflict at the New School, whose embattled president, Bob Kerrey, received an overwhelming no-confidence vote from the university’s full-time faculty in December.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Job cuts, New School
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More Drivel From the New York Times
howtheuniversityworks.com: More Drivel From the New York Times
Today the Grey Lady lent the op-ed page to yet another Columbia prof with the same old faux “analysis” of graduate education.
Why golly, the problem with the university is that there aren’t enough teaching positions out there to employ all of our excess doctorates Mark C. Taylor says: “Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist).” Because there are just too many folks with Ph.D.’s out there, “there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.”
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Posted in Commentary
Tagged Academics, adjuncts, Contingent labor, Job market, Working conditions