Educational
Policies Committee 2001-2002
Linda Collins, Los Medanos College, Chair
Lacy Barnes-Mileham, Reedley College
Chris Storer, De Anza College
Bruce Koller, Diablo Valley College
Bernie Seyboldt Day, Ohlone/Foothill College
Rosa Carlson, College of the Sequoias, CIO Representative
Jeff Cooper, Shasta College, CalSACCC Representative
Educational
Policies Committee 2000-2001
Kate Clark, Irvine Valley College, Chair
Lacy Barnes-Mileham, Reedley College
Elton Hall, Moorpark College
Hoke Simpson, Grossmont College
Ian Walton, Mission College
Susan Carleo, Los Angeles Valley College, CIO
Representative
Introduction
The status and use of part-time
faculty hired on temporary assignments in the
California community colleges (CCCs) has been
a long-standing and growing concern of the Academic
Senate, both as part of those issues that affect
all community college teachers and as a distinct
area of concern in its own right. In 1974, less
than seven years after 1967 legislation authorizing
the permanent classification of part-time faculty
as temporary employees and less than six years
after the founding of the Academic Senate, resolutions
were adopted addressing part-time faculty issues.
As early as 1977, the Board of Governors of the
California Community Colleges joined in this concern,
adopting policy statements limiting the use of
part-time faculty to 25% of credit instruction
and asserting their support of equal pay for equal
work. Over the following 25 years, the Academic
Senate continued to voice its concern in resolutions,
policy papers, and in testimony before the Board
of Governors and the Legislature.
Recent activities at the state
level relating to the complex problems and issues
surrounding the overuse and abuse of part-time
temporary assignments, and the resulting impact
on the quality of the community colleges, indicate
that real change is now underway.
This paper responds to the Spring
1999 resolution focusing on part-time issues:
S 99 19.02. Resolved that the
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
direct the Executive Committee to study comprehensive
solutions to the problems and issues developing
out of the current system use of part-time temporary
faculty, including the possibility of a change
in the California Education Code to require hiring
of full-service faculty for all faculty positions,
whether full-time contract or regular, or part-time
contract or regular, and to limit the use of temporary
faculty to short-term substitutions for duties
of contract or regular faculty, and
Be it further resolved that
the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
direct the Executive Committee to report to the
2000 Spring Plenary Session with analysis and
recommendations.
This resolution was prompted
by the introduction of Assembly Bill 420 (Wildman)
into the 1998-99 legislative session. In its early
form AB 420 would have required equal pay for
equal work, paid office hours, health benefits,
and seniority based rehire rights, for part-time
faculty in the California community colleges.
It consequently became known informally as a "Part-time
Faculty Bill of Rights."
At that time, the Board of Governors
of California Community Colleges had engaged the
Chancellor's Office and the Consultation Council
in discussions seeking a "comprehensive solution"
to the problems issuing from the use of part-time
temporary faculty assignments in the system. However,
system level discussions proceeded slowly.
From 1999 to 2001, discussions
of these issues at the state level, though somewhat
disconnected, proceeded at a more rapid pace.
The evolving debate that ensued, restructured
and deepened the understanding of these issues.
During the Spring 1999, AB 420 (Wildman) was amended
radically but was signed into law requiring the
California Postsecondary Education Commission
(CPEC) to conduct a comprehensive study of CCC
part-time faculty employment and compensation.
Delays in the CPEC study prompted the Joint Legislative
Audit Committee (JLAC) to hold hearings during
the Spring 2000. The State Auditor was asked by
JLAC to report on the issues, and the Bureau of
State Audits completed its work by June 2000.
In September 2001, acting on
Consultation consensus, the CCC Board of Governors
adopted Board Policy reaffirming their "equal
pay for equal work" position taken in 1977.
The new policy statement declared that "part-time
faculty should be paid comparably to full-time
faculty for those professional responsibilities
expected equally of full- and part-time faculty."
Anticipating this policy, a line item for part-time
faculty compensation equity had been included
in the 2001-2002 system budget proposal, and in
July 2001, Governor Davis signed the California
Budget Bill with an initial $57 million for this
part-time faculty compensation fund. The new Board
Policy further required that "specific definitions
and policies regarding comparable pay are to be
determined locally, through the collective bargaining
process," and that these definitions and
policies should be completed by January or February
2003.
While on the surface the required
definitions and policies appear to be primarily
about pay and working conditions (and hence of
concern primarily to collective bargaining agents),
this paper argues that the issues relate to the
very essence of faculty professionalism and to
the educational quality of the CCC. Academic tradition
has defined the work of professional educators
in terms of Carnegie units of instruction. The
broad range of professional activities beyond
the classroom, while often discussed in general
terms, is seldom specified in detail. The reduction
of faculty professionalism to hourly work has
been resisted for tenured faculty positions. However,
part-time temporary assignments have been regularly
forced into just such an hourly structure. Defining
"comparable pay for comparable work"
requires a basis of comparison. Any reduction
in part-time faculty compensation below a 100%
pro-rated proportion based on Carnegie unit load
requires determining just which professional expectations
of tenured and tenure track faculty need not be
expected of part-time temporary faculty. Any proposed
reduction in professional expectations must be
considered in terms of its potential impact on
the educational quality and equity provided to
the students of such faculty. Consequently, it
is extremely important that local academic senates
and the faculty as a whole become engaged in these
deliberations.
This paper provides a more detailed
history of the issues; it reviews earlier Academic
Senate papers and resolutions regarding the use
of part-time temporary faculty in California's
community colleges, placing them within the historical
context. It then looks at recent activities in
Sacramento and studies reported by the California
State Auditor and the California Post Secondary
Education Commission. The paper then reviews the
recent actions by the Board of Governors of the
California Community Colleges, the California
Legislature, and the Governor. While developing
this historical survey, this paper considers these
issues from a principled perspective, seeking
to understand their complexity. It discusses the
academic and professional implications of recent
developments and offers an analysis of the major
issues that continue to affect the role of part-time
faculty and the California Community College System.
The paper concludes with a series
of recommendations, some of which reaffirm earlier
Academic Senate recommendations, and some that
are new and more comprehensive. In the most general
terms, the Academic Senate recommends that local
senates work with their faculty association or
union, and with their district's administration
and board of trustees, to establish definitions
and policies regarding part-time faculty pay equity
that assure equal professional expectations of
all faculty. All of these recommendations are
offered with the goal of moving California's community
colleges toward a comprehensive solution to these
complex problems, a solution that will be mindful
of the academic and professional issues for which
the Academic Senate is accountable.
SECTION
I. History, Use and Academic Senate Response to
Issues of Part-time Temporary Faculty
History of Part-time Temporary
Faculty Use
During the research and writing
of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education,
the ratio of full-time faculty to full-time students
in the public junior colleges was less than 1/20.
The current ratio of full-time equivalent faculty
(FTE) (full- and part-time faculty) to full-time
equivalent students is over 1/35, nearly doubling
the responsibilities of faculty.
Prior to 1967, part-time temporary
assignments were strictly limited to use in the
evening programs of stand-alone courses for adult
learners but also provided occasional short-term
substitutions for full-time tenured faculty. Students
in the regular day programs were almost all full-time
students pursuing integrated programs leading
to a degree, transfer, or to a certificate. Consequently,
the Master Plan virtually ignores any limited
role part-time temporary faculty might have played
in the junior colleges.
In November 1967, Education
Code §13337.5 became effective. Often referred
to as the 60% law, this section, now labeled §87482.5
(a), reads,
Not withstanding any other provision
of law, any person who is employed to teach adult
or community college classes for not more than
60 percent of the hours per week considered a
full-time assignment for regular employees having
comparable duties shall be classified as a temporary
employee, and shall not become a contract employee
under section 87604.
By 1974, the over use of such
temporary part-time faculty had already become
an issue. The Academic Senate, then in its fifth
year, adopted three resolutions regarding the
use of part-time faculty.
(Spring
1974) SUPPORT legislation to ensure that part-time,
substitute, and temporary teachers are granted
the benefits of due process and equitable pro-rata
remuneration that are provided for contract and
regular teachers; request that AB 2965 (Cory/Rodda)
be so written.
(Fall
1974): SUPPORT any legislative or state board
proposal for modification in statutes governing
employment of certificated personnel in community
colleges which will assure that students attending
classes taught by part-time instructors receive
educational opportunities, privileges, and advantages
equal to those of students attending classes taught
by full-time instructors.
(Fall
1974) ENCOURAGE local Senates to involve part-time
instructors actively in Senate affairs.
It should be noted that these
1974 resolutions encompass the entire range of
part-time faculty issues that have remained unresolved
for the ensuing 28 years!
The California Community and
Junior College Association reported that in 1974
there were 14,747 full-time community college
faculty while there were 24,421 part-time. Thus,
62.3 percent of faculty had become part-time and
they were already teaching 28% of graded classes.
In 1979-80, Assembly Bill 1550
(Vasconcellos, Chapter 1177) focused legislative
concerns on the number and use of part-time temporary
faculty and full-time faculty overload assignments.
The bill required that:
The Board of Governors of the
California Community Colleges shall publish a
statewide report on part-time employment patterns
and practices in each community college district
to be submitted to the legislature no later than
January 1, 1982. At the least, the report shall
include a comparison of full-time and part-time
faculty in the areas of teaching workload, related
academic activities, remuneration, types of certificates,
types of classes taught, length of employment,
and whether or not the faculty members are evaluated.
Information on assignments performed by full-time
instructors which is in addition to their full-time
assignment and for which additional compensation
is provided shall be included in the report.
In the subsequent report to
the Legislature, in Spring 1981 the Chancellor's
Office reported that the number of full-time faculty
had grown to 15,753 while that of part-time faculty
had grown to 29,879. Thus, in seven years, part-time
faculty had become 65.5%, a 3.2% increase. Thirty-one
percent (31%) of credit instruction was reported
to be by part-time faculty, a 3% increase during
the same seven-year period.
The most recent Chancellor's
Office Report on Staffing for Fall 2000 shows
that the number of full-time faculty has grown
to 18,864, while part-time faculty now number
36,900 or 66.2%. While this represents less than
a 1% increase over the past nineteen years, the
percentage of credit instruction taught by part-time
faculty has now climbed to 46.1%, a 15.1% increase.
At least as early as 1984, the
CPEC began to raise concerns over the
…high proportion of community
college faculty who are employed on a part-time
basis. …Over dependence on part-time faculty
inevitably injures not only part-time faculty,
but also their full-time colleagues and, most
of all, the students.
Use of part-time temporary faculty
has long been justified for the flexibility it
allows the colleges in providing a broad program
of courses. However, by the time of AB 1725 (Vasconcellos),
1988, the Legislature had become so concerned
about the continuing failure of the CCCs to deal
with a repeatedly flagged problem that they wrote:
(b) If the community colleges
are to respond creatively to the challenges of
the coming decades, they must have a strong and
stable core of full-time faculty with long-term
commitments to their colleges. There is proper
concern about the effect of over reliance on part-time
faculty, particularly in the core transfer curricula.
Under current conditions, part-time faculty, no
matter how talented as teachers, rarely participate
in college programs, design departmental curricula,
or advise and counsel students…
(d) Decisions regarding the
appropriateness of part-time faculty should be
made on the basis of academic and program needs,
however, and not for financial savings. (AB 1725,
Section 4)
AB 1725 established that at
least 75% of credit instruction should be by full-time
faculty, adding §87482.6 to the Education
Code. In part, this reads:
… the Legislature wishes
to recognize and make efforts to address longstanding
policy of the board of governors that at least
75 percent of the hours of credit instruction
in the California Community Colleges, as a system,
should be taught by full-time instructors. To
this end, community college districts which have
less than 75 percent of their hours of credit
instruction taught by full-time instructors shall
apply a portion of the program improvement allocation
received pursuant to section 84755…
While funding was provided for
two years to move the system toward achieving
this, no further program improvement funding has
been allocated since the beginning of the early
1990s recession. Growth funding has allowed for
some increase in full-time faculty positions but
has not kept pace with enrollment, leading to
an increased reliance on part-time faculty.
Academic Senate Responses to
the Issues
The Academic Senate has focused
its concerns on four areas impacted by over-reliance
on part-time faculty:
on students directly through
the limited institutional support of part-time
faculty instruction;
on full-time faculty through
the increased professional burdens spread
among fewer tenured faculty;
on part-time faculty because
of a lack of career support, compensation,
and benefits; and,
on institutional integrity.
The Academic Senate has adopted
four major papers addressing issues of part-time
faculty, as well as an equity statement developed
with other faculty organizations. Those interested
in the detailed history of the Academic Senate's
response should read the papers briefly discussed
below.
Part-Time Faculty Hiring Procedures:
A Model Based on Assembly Bill 1725
Perhaps no part of the community
college reforms instituted by AB 1725 in 1988
was as important as the "professionalization"
of the faculty and the strengthening of the academic
senates. The reforms switched the community colleges
from a K-12 system of credentials under the Board
of Education to a system of minimum qualifications
established by the Board of Governors under the
responsibility of the Academic Senate and based
on the needs of the curriculum. Fair and effective
hiring processes were established in law with
the Academic Senate and faculty primarily responsible
for the quality of faculty hiring. The tenure
review process was extended from two to four years
with an added emphasis on pre- and post-tenure
peer review.
Part-time faculty hiring was
only briefly mentioned by the Legislature. All
faculty were to be subject to the same set of
minimum qualifications and hired under the same
processes. Local senates quickly took on their
newly clarified responsibilities. Struggling locally
with high rates of part-time faculty replacement
per year, many turned to the Academic Senate for
guidance. This 1989 position paper provided a
model for hiring that could be used by local senates
in coming to agreement with their district boards
on procedures to be used in hiring new part-time
faculty.
The paper established as a first
principle of the Academic Senate that hiring processes
are meant to ensure hiring faculty who are experts
in their disciplines, skilled in teaching and
in serving the needs of a diverse population,
effective in institutional service, and sensitive
to the racial and cultural diversity of the adult
population of California. In addition, the paper
established the goal of hiring faculty who represent
the diversity of the actual and potential students
they serve. This, of course, reflected the language
and intent of AB 1725.
In general, the goal of the
model was to mirror the full-time hiring process
as closely as deemed possible. The major difference
between the full-time model and the part-time
model was the latter's procedure designed to cover
emergency hires of part-time faculty. This was
designed to address sudden openings occurring
when an instructor became unavailable to teach
at the last moment, or when sections were added
late to accommodate enrollment demand in key courses.
In such cases the college and academic senate
presidents were to certify that the situation
could not be foreseen; the model included a provision
that faculty so hired must be evaluated in their
first term in accordance with college procedures.
In reiterating that the part-time
hiring model reflects the full-time hiring model,
the paper affirmed that such strict parallelism
"guarantees a consistently high quality of
instruction to students, and it endows the status
of part-time instructor with the aura of professionalism
that it deserves."
The 1989 paper concluded by
recommending that local academic senates should:
review their district's
hiring policy and procedures and compare them
to this model to determine whether the policy
and procedures in place are as rigorous as
those in place for full-time hiring.
ensure, through review of
hiring policy and procedures and through clarification
where needed, that part-time hiring policy
and procedures mirror full-time hiring policy
and procedure.
periodically review hiring
policy and procedures and monitor their implementation
and effectiveness to ensure that, over time,
institutions do not drift away from them in
practice.
However, many have questioned
whether such local reviews have been done, or
whether they can be effective. No systematic review
of local hiring policies, procedures, and implementation
has been done at the state level. Perceptions
in the field that part-time faculty are not subject
to rigorous hiring processes, and that the emergency
hiring process has opened the door to widespread
disregard for fair and effective hiring processes
for part-time faculty, undermine the respect and
status accorded to part-time faculty, and can
be used to argue against re-employment or re-hire
rights for part-time faculty. Also, there have
been regular attempts to weaken the system of
minimum qualifications by requests to implement
single course equivalency in cases where few part-time
faculty candidates are available with the required
discipline preparation. Further, there are stories
of colleges quietly granting equivalency when
they have little basis in fact, justifying such
action on single course expertise. Such perceptions
are damaging to the careers and professional credibility
of part-time faculty and to the colleges.
Finally, there is simply the
scale of part-time faculty hiring to be considered.
Nearly 50% of districts reported in Fall 2000
that they hire over 15% of their part-time faculty
as new hires (22 districts reported over 20% were
new hires), and the state average was 17.11% new
part-time faculty hires. The practical logistics
of passing this many faculty through a rigorous
screening and interview process each semester
is hardly credible. It is clear that the increased
institutional maintenance load placed on full-time
faculty and administrators must lead to trade-offs
that inevitably reduce their overall effectiveness.
It is also clear that such stories, whether based
in fact or fiction, are damaging to the careers
and professional credibility of part-time faculty
and to the colleges.
Consequently, the Academic Senate
should undertake a comprehensive statewide review
of part-time faculty hiring and evaluation policies,
procedures, and implementation. A thorough review
would include studying such areas as: the extent
of implementation of fair and effective hiring
and evaluation practices; an analysis of the causes
of turnover and retention of part-time faculty;
an analysis of long term changes in the diversity
of part- and full-time faculty; and the impact
of current part-time faculty employment practices
on full-time faculty and administrative responsibilities.
Part-Time Faculty in the California
Community Colleges
The Fall 1992 Plenary Session
of the Academic Senate adopted the paper titled
Part-Time Faculty in the California Community
Colleges. It reviewed the overuse and unequal
compensation of part-time faculty, and discussed
academic quality and equal treatment and the ratio
of part-time faculty to full-time faculty. The
paper also surveyed Academic Senate resolutions
regarding part-time faculty up to that time, beginning
with the 1974 resolutions referred to above (a
comprehensive listing of Academic Senate resolutions
relating to part-time faculty issues is included
in the Chronology outlined in Appendix A). It
noted attempts to ameliorate the situation of
part-time faculty, referenced relevant legislative
actions, and included pertinent Education Code
provisions.
Sadly, this paper has stood
the test of time. Change a few dates and numbers,
and it could be used to describe the situation
of part-time faculty today. Reading the 1992 paper
makes clear that there was some momentum, though
inadequate, to reduce the problems created by
the use of part-time faculty by attempting to
merge part-time assignments into full-time positions,
by earmarking funds to do that, and by improving
the lot of part-time teachers by not exploiting
them for purely budgetary reasons.
Most importantly, the 1992 paper
demonstrated the Academic Senate's growing concern
for the whole range of issues raised by the overuse
of part-time faculty. While recognizing the important
working condition issues surrounding the use of
part-time faculty, the paper forcefully reminded
the system of the unavoidable negative effects
these conditions have on the institutional mission
of the colleges and on the equitable opportunities
students need and deserve.
The Council of Faculty Organizations
(COFO) Faculty Equity Statement.
In Fall 1995, the Academic Senate
joined with all the statewide community college
faculty organizations to draft a "Faculty
Equity Statement." (COFO was joined in this
effort by part-time faculty leaders who were emerging
at the state level by now.)
In Spring 1996, the Statement
was formally adopted by the Academic Senate, as
it had been by the other faculty organizations,
and was published as an appendix to the 1996 paper,
The Use of Part-Time Faculty in California Community
Colleges: Issues and Impact, discussed next. The
full Statement is included here since any understanding
of more recent events must be seen within the
collegial context created at that time. The Statement
should be read first and foremost as a statement
of principle, but also as a plan for, and commitment
to, concerted action.
COFO Faculty Equity Statement
We, the members of the Council
of Faculty Organizations (COFO), recognize that
the part-time and full-time faculty members of
the California Community College System share
common professional interests. The core of this
common interest is our responsibility to provide
educational opportunities of the highest quality
to our students. To accomplish that purpose full-
and part-time faculty must communicate effectively
with each other, share institutional responsibilities
and rewards, and create an academic community
that is based on mutual respect. Part-time faculty
must be recognized as competent, responsible and
productive members of a distinguished and honorable
profession. At the present time, these conditions
do not uniformly exist in the community colleges
of California.
Providing
students an excellent education and instituting
fair working conditions for part-time faculty
are complementary objectives. To this end, COFO
supports the right of part-time faculty to participate
in organizations and activities that shape the
direction of the individual community college.
All faculty should participate in departmental
functions, assume organizational responsibilities,
and contribute to the general well being of the
institution.
Full-
and part-time faculty are required to meet the
same minimum qualifications for
employment and should be hired and evaluated using
comparable processes. Students should have reasonable
access to all faculty members - both full- and
part-time. Since full-and part-time faculty have
the same responsibilities to students, part-time
faculty members should have the same support services,
office space, choice of educational materials,
and opportunities for professional development
as their full-time colleagues.
Part-time
faculty should be accorded fair compensation,
professional respect and due process. It is the
recognized role and responsibility of individual
bargaining agents to make the contractual gains
that will benefit part-time faculty which in turn
will improve the educational quality of the institutions
that employ them. However, we, the representatives
to COFO, urge support for the following rights
for part-time faculty: pro-rata pay, contractual
considerations for full-time positions, health
benefits, seniority on re-hire rights, paid office
hours, legitimate STRS pension opportunities and
true professional status relating to teaching
and learning issues.
We view
the need for improving these conditions as self-evident,
and we are confident that better communication
and mutual respect between full- and part-time
faculty, as well as frank discussions of these
labor and educational issues, will lead to changes
that will benefit community colleges and full-time
faculty as well as the part-time faculty who are
directly affected.
Prior to the COFO Statement,
faculty organizations had largely focused their
efforts on these issues piecemeal through specific
legislation and through attempts to merge part-time
assignments into full-time regular positions.
On the basis of the Statement, the coalition of
faculty organizations turned its attention directly
to the overuse and treatment of part-time faculty
members in the community colleges and the resulting
degradation of the ability of all faculty and
the colleges themselves to serve their mission
and students. With this shift of focus, there
emerged a growing understanding of the complex
interrelations among all the issues, and their
unification under the concept of faculty professionalization
and equity.
The Use of Part-Time Faculty
in California Community Colleges: Issues and Impact
This paper was a response to
the growing recognition of the complex interrelations
of the many problems growing out of the over-reliance
on part-time faculty and a Spring 1995 resolution
referred to the Executive Committee of the Academic
Senate, calling for Board of Governors' or legislative
action to protect students from inequitable educational
opportunities resulting from part-time faculty
employment practices. It provides an analysis
of emergent issues and the continuing impact of
the by now pervasive and systemic problems created
by part-time temporary faculty use driven primarily
by cost-cutting concerns. The analysis reflects
the spirit of the COFO Faculty Equity Statement
and the mounting concern about the integrity and
coherence of academic programs and student services,
and about the continued ability of the system
to serve its mission. The paper concluded with
several recommendations:
1. A corps of full-time tenured
faculty is essential to the maintenance of educational
excellence, academic integrity, and the freedom
to pursue and effect the acquisition of knowledge
without fear of reprisal for exercising that freedom
consistent with one's academic and professional
judgment. Failure to attain and maintain such
a body of full-time tenured faculty threatens
the very ambition, creativity, innovation, exploration,
and criticism which is central to academic integrity
of programs and courses of study in institutions
of higher learning. Local academic senates should
resolve the above statement and work with the
local administration to ensure the colleges maintain
such a commitment.
Much of this language builds
on the intent language of AB 1725. However, since
the adoption of the "Issues and Impact"
paper, and facing the reality of increasing numbers
of permanent "temporary" part-time faculty,
there has developed a growing insistence that
these values of full-time tenure and tenure-track
positions must be incorporated into part-time
positions as much as possible, even while continuing
work to reduce dependence on part-time faculty.
2. Local academic senates should
resolve to create a climate of mutual respect
between the full- and part-time faculty.
This language parallels the
broader language of the 1995 COFO Faculty Equity
Statement.
3. Consistent with the intent
language of state law, the decision to hire part-time
faculty should be based on educational program
and service needs, not perceived financial savings.
This language repeats almost
verbatim the AB 1725 intent language. However,
continued underfunding of the CCC System has led
to the general acceptance by all involved that
much, if not most, use of part-time faculty is
a response to their current cheaper cost rather
than program needs.
4. The California Community
Colleges should diligently work toward surpassing
a minimum of 75% of the hours of instruction to
be taught by full-time faculty. Consistent with
previous resolutions, local academic senates should
continue to support student access to faculty
in all disciplines including the counseling and
library disciplines.
The paper's discussion of the
complex issues revolving around attempts to move
the system toward the minimum standard that 75%
of instruction should be taught by full-time faculty
is very important. Attempts to further weaken
the then current Title 5 regulations were also
discussed. Attention was focused on the disincentives
that were reducing the number of full-time counseling
and library faculty. Since the paper was adopted,
non-teaching faculty have been added to the 75/25
regulations; this has helped stabilize hiring
in these fields.
5. Colleges should make every
effort to support the integration of part-time
faculty into the institutional processes. Local
academic senates should consult with the local
union, where applicable, to facilitate the availability
of part-time faculty to interact with students,
participate in governance, and participate in
curriculum decision making processes.
The paper, in seeking to understand
the broad and complex issues it faced, referenced
a growing body of literature developing nationally
as higher education throughout the United States
and Canada grappled with related issues. Research
by Grappa and Leslie (1993), and by Tinto (1988),
was cited in calling attention to the importance
of faculty integration within the broader academic
community of their colleges and of institutional
support of all faculty.
6. Hiring
processes for part-time faculty should have components
identical to those of full-time faculty hiring
processes, including proper notice, recruitment,
screening, interviewing, and selection. Local
academic senates should work with the designees
of the board to ensure the faculty hiring policies
include processes for hiring part-time faculty.
A hiring process which establishes a diverse pool
of qualified faculty for part-time assignments
should be pursued.
7. Local academic senates should work with their
union to ensure evaluation processes for part-time
faculty have identical components as full-time
faculty evaluation processes.
The need for reiteration of
these recommendations in 1996, seven years after
the Part-time Faculty Hiring Procedures paper,
is further indication of the important need for
the statewide review of hiring practices and evaluation
recommended above.
8. In order for part-time faculty
to effectively perform their professional duties
and for students to have reasonable access to
the faculty, the local colleges should provide
a level of support comparable to that of full-time
faculty with similar professional duties. Support
usually includes office space, communication technology,
faculty development resources, and instructional
media/reproduction support.
9. The Academic Senate for California
Community Colleges should seek legislation and/or
regulations which would require that local colleges
provide all students comparable access to instructors,
whether they be full-time or part-time, and that
all faculty will have comparable access to institutional
support of professional services.
Senate resolutions 19.01 F01
and 19.02 F01 indicate that, even with recent
budget support of office hours for part-time faculty,
progress in this area has been incomplete.
The 1996 Issues and Impact paper
shifted the tone of the Academic Senate's response
to part-time faculty issues, showing a growing
consensus with other faculty organizations over
the critical and interrelated nature of the problems
and the need to seek legislative solutions. The
paper began to call more focused attention to
the importance of integrating part-time faculty
within the broader activities of the academic
community, recognizing their marginalization,
isolation, and alienation as fundamental to specific
problems impacting the quality of the institutions
and their students' educational opportunities
and experiences.
Participation
of Part-time Faculty on the Executive Committee
of the Academic Senate for California Community
Colleges
This paper tackled specific
issues within the Academic Senate itself in an
attempt to increase part-time faculty participation
in Academic Senate activities. The paper noted
that,
…while
the Academic Senate has long supported the inclusion
of part-time faculty in local academic senates
and has passed many resolutions relating to the
inclusion of part-time faculty in academic senate
processes, few part-time faculty participate in
these processes. Recognizing the circumstances
of part-time faculty, it is clear that without
proactive leadership at the state and local academic
senate levels, few part-time faculty will develop
the needed background experience and collegial
confidence required to become a successful Senate
delegate or Executive Committee member.
The paper concluded with the
following recommendations:
1. Bylaws
and policies of the Academic Senate for California
Community Colleges should be developed to facilitate
and encourage part-time faculty participation
on standing or ad hoc committees, as well as,
providing appointments to system advisory committees
and the like.
2. A
proactive recruitment and mentoring process should
be developed to encourage leadership and involvement
of full- and part-time faculty on standing and
ad hoc committees, as well as, the Executive Committee.
This should include urging local academic senates
to seriously consider the importance of part-time
faculty involvement in governance and collegial
relationships at the local level and provide those
opportunities.
3. The
forms used in declaring the intent to run should
visually identify the opportunity for part-time
faculty to run. In addition, the Bylaws of the
Academic Senate should clearly delineate the opportunity
for part-time faculty to run for a position on
the Executive Committee and the requirements for
doing so. Of course the requirements would be
the same as for full time, but with further elaboration
on their faculty assignment. This should include
the requirement for at least a 40% faculty assignment
at a specific college each semester/quarter, and
what happens when an assignment is lost because
of class cancellations or budget constraints.
4. If
a part-time faculty member is elected to serve
on the Executive Committee, reassigned time will
be provided within the constraints of the 60%
law from the member's district of primary employment.
5. If
a part-time faculty member is elected to serve
on the Executive Committee and they are already
employed with a 60% assignment, while it is not
the preferred practice, a stipend at the part-time
rate can be provided.
These recommendations are particularly
interesting in noting the difficulties part-time
faculty face in seeking to fulfill their broader
professional responsibilities as a result of the
structure of their employment. While the Academic
Senate has sought means to integrate part-time
faculty into the professional academic community
and has recognized the importance of such professionalization,
several factors-including past practice, chronic
under-funding of the colleges, and the economic
realities faced by part-time faculty themselves-have
worked to continue their marginalization. Part-time
faculty tend to be included in the academic life
of the colleges only where there is a persistent
and determined effort of both full-time and part-time
faculty.
SECTION II. Recent State
Activities Relating to Part-time Faculty Use
The use of part-time faculty
in California community colleges has changed significantly
over the past 40 years. Employment issues such
as benefits, on-campus offices, and institutional
support did not arise when part-time instructors
worked primarily in the community college evening
program while holding other full-time day jobs.
Since the evening programs were to provide stand-alone
courses to part-time students who were mature
adult learners, the assumption appeared to be
that both students and instructors came to the
classroom from home or work, and returned home
after class. In theory at least, the instructor's
contact with their students was naturally limited
to a few minutes before and after class, and no
professional duties beyond minimal preparation
of the course curriculum was expected. Participation
of such faculty members in local academic senate
deliberations, curriculum planning and development,
and governance committees, was simply not at issue.
However, since the 1960 Master
Plan, there has been a series of significant changes.
As noted previously, in 1967 the Education Code
was amended to authorize all part-time faculty
teaching adult or community college classes for
no more than 60% of a full-time load to be classified
as temporary faculty. Education Code changes during
the 1970s retained tight limitations on the use
of part-time temporary faculty in K-12 programs,
but there was a rapid influx of part-time faculty
into the community colleges.
Community colleges expanded
their services as student profiles changed and
tuition costs at the four-year institutions increased.
Until the mid 1980s, more and more community college
students became part-time while working full-time,
needing full academic programs at night with full
institutional support. Also, colleges have scheduled
increasing numbers of regular program sections
in the evening to more efficiently utilize limited
facilities, and many full-time students are enrolled
in evening classes.
With the June 1978 passage of
Proposition 13, fiscal pressures already pressing
on college programs and planning increased dramatically,
and there was a rapid replacement of many retiring
full-time faculty with temporary hires. Growth
in the student body enrollment was also accommodated
by use of temporary hires.
An increasing percentage of
these new part-timers were recent graduates hired
to teach within core general education and transfer
programs. By 1985, 32% of part-time faculty were
teaching credit classes, 22% were teaching in
the day program, and, for example, 28.7% of credit
English/Humanities courses and 18.3% of credit
Social Sciences courses were taught by part-time
faculty.
A significant part of this shift
was a result of legislative action in 1982-83
that mandated cuts in recreational, avocational
and personal development courses. These cuts led
to a reduction of part-time faculty from 29,796
to 22,847 over a two-year period. Seven years
later, with the early 80s recession in the past,
part-time faculty numbers had increased to over
30,000. Most of the new part-time positions were
now in credit instruction.
By 2000, over 79% of part-time
faculty were teaching credit classes (a 47% increase
in the last 15 years). Data on the difference
between day and evening programs is no longer
being reported, but in the two examples above,
in 2000, 42% of credit English/Humanities classes
and 40% of credit Social Sciences classes were
taught by part-time faculty (in 15 years, 15.3%
and 21.7% increases, respectively).
These part-time faculty often
see teaching as their profession and part-time
jobs as an entry into a tight job market. However,
fewer new full-time positions have opened as under-funding
has continued. The distinction between the curriculum
for and the students of day and evening programs
has nearly disappeared.
As a consequence of these interrelated
developments, employment standards and practices
for the increasing corps of permanent "temporary
faculty" has become a constantly growing
concern, as has the limited institutional support
available to the students of these teachers.
Health Benefits for Part-time
Faculty
Part-time faculty have typically
been excluded from health benefit coverage because
they were seen as temporary employees with access
to benefits through other employment or retirement.
The Chancellor's Office reported that in 1981
part-time faculty had an average of less than
3 years experience, and only 19% had taught more
than 6 years in the same district. But the recent
CPEC study found that, on average, part-time faculty
in 2001 have taught 8.7 years in their current
district, and have 12 years of teaching experience.
As the profile of part-time faculty has changed,
with more being regularly rehired as professional
educators, attempts to attain some degree of coverage
through legislation gained increasingly broad
support, but these remained unsuccessful until
the mid-1990s. Finally, in 1996, a compromise
was reached in AB 3099. While not requiring health
care benefits for part-time faculty, the bill
created a fund that would provide some state reimbursement
of district benefit costs. The benefits would
be made accessible to those temporary employees
with the greatest need.
By the end of 2000-01, responding
to AB 3099, 25 districts had negotiated some level
of coverage for a few part-time faculty. Typically,
a district will pay one-half the costs of a basic-coverage
health care plan (for which it is reimbursed by
the state) for part-time faculty who teach 40%
of a full-time load and who certify that they
have no access to coverage from another source.
About 5.5% of part-time faculty statewide were
served by this fund in 2000-01, yet 20 to 26%
of part-time faculty have been able to gain coverage
in some districts where a plan has been established
for several years. The CPEC Report on Part-time
Faculty (2001) found that 58% of part-time faculty
statewide receive health benefits from some source
other than their district.
The increasing need for health
benefits by community college part-time faculty
is an indication of the changing character of
California community college temporary employment
and the increasing number of these faculty members
who have focused their professional lives on their
institutions.
Part-time Faculty and Student
Contact (Office Hours)
Academic Senate papers and resolutions
have demonstrated that student access to part-time
faculty has long been an Academic Senate concern.
The Academic Senate's position is clear: students
should have access to part-time faculty comparable
to their access to full-time faculty. By the 1980s,
CPEC and the Legislature were beginning to echo
this position. However, a Chancellor's Office
1987 study showed that, between 1981 and 1986,
the number of districts requiring part-time faculty
to keep office hours, advise students, participate
in course and program development, and other such
professional duties, actually declined.
Faculty know that the time spent
in office hours-whether actually in an office
or at the cafeteria or in the hallway, or by some
distance mode like telephone or email office hours
-can be crucial to student success. Unfortunately,
two-thirds of California community colleges have
yet to provide space, technology, or compensation
for part-time instructors to engage in this kind
of contact, despite the authorization and partial
reimbursement funding allocated by the state for
this purpose. The normal professional expectations
of all faculty in higher education have long included
access by their students outside of regular class
times for the purposes of academic advising, intellectual
exchange, and tutorial assistance. In the California
community colleges, full-time faculty members
usually have minimum office hours negotiated into
their contracts and are paid for such activity.
Educational literature affirms that students'
contact with their instructors is among the significant
institutional variables connected to student success.
However, most part-time faculty members, generally
seen as hourly employees, are neither contractually
required to be available to students outside of
class nor compensated for making themselves available.
Clearly, if office hours and one-on-one contact
with students is so fundamental to the educational
process as to place it in the negotiated contracts
of full-time faculty members, then the lack of
facilities and compensation for such work by part-time
faculty members constitutes a deficiency in institutional
support of a part-time faculty member's students,
thereby creating a de facto secondary tier of
instructional employees. There is a qualitative
differential in the education full-time and part-time
faculty members are thereby able to provide to
their respective students.
This difference is widely recognized. One faculty
member, outraged by this inequity, proposed placing
an asterisk in the class schedule next to those
sections taught by part-time faculty members.
At the bottom of each page would be a notice:
"*This class is taught by a faculty member
who does not receive compensation for office hours
and is not expected to hold them. This is not
a full-service class." The collective horror
with which this suggestion was met tacitly admits
this fundamental difference and confirms that
all segments of the community college system understand
the importance of one-on-one contact between students
and faculty outside of the classroom.
Part-time faculty members often
hold office hours without being compensated, but
many cannot do so simply because they must rush
from one part-time assignment to another at a
different college, or to other full-time or part-time
work. While voluntary service is noble and reflects
dedication to high quality teaching by the vast
majority of faculty members, it is unreasonable
to expect that those who are compensated least
for their work will put the most into it voluntarily.
Remarkably, the CPEC study found that, except
for humanities and health/PE, part-time faculty
spend 8 to13% of their professional activities
on office hour consultation while full-time faculty
in the same disciplines spend 9 to 12%.
The California Community College
System and the State of California (AB 301, 1997)
made some move to remedy this problem in providing
quality education by establishing a fund to reimburse
districts 50% of their costs if they negotiated
some level of office hour compensation for their
part-time faculty members. Despite the resistance
of many districts even to consider negotiating
part-time faculty office hours, enough did so
to exhaust the modest pool of funds provided for
these subsidies.
Subsequent legislation (AB 420
1999), and the 2001-2002 state budget have added
to this fund to cover extensions of the part-time
faculty office hour program, and both the Legislature
and the Governor have shown strong support to
expand this fund as needed. Currently, 26 districts
are compensating some part-time faculty office
hours through this fund, with about 11,000 participants
(approximately 31% of CCC part-time faculty statewide).
Several of the districts that have negotiated
compensated office hours for part-time faculty
have a participation rate of nearly 100%.
At the 2001 Fall Session, the
Academic Senate adopted two resolutions supporting
office hours and facilities for part-time faculty
members. The Academic Senate should work with
Consultation members and the Board of Governors
in developing mechanisms to ensure that all California
community college faculty assignments include
the expectation that students will receive equitable
opportunities for effective contact with their
instructors outside of the regular class period.
The Academic Senate also urges
local senates to work with their collective bargaining
units, and with their administrators and trustees,
to establish local policies and negotiated agreements
to provide compensated office hours as a part
of all instructional assignments-in order to ensure
that all students have equitable access to their
instructors outside of class.
The Academic Senate further
recommends that, while supporting both compensation
and facilities for part-time faculty office hours
as a sensible approach to assuring students equal
access to all faculty, districts, local senates
and unions should work together to devise creative
options to traditional office hours. These options
might include email accessibility, telephone office
hours, and online chat rooms. Such alternatives
to traditional office space and time do not abrogate
the necessity of compensating part-time faculty
for services rendered, nor should they be assumed
to fully replace the need for traditional face-to-face
contact between students and faculty outside of
class.
Comparable Pay for Comparable
Work
Responding to early concerns
about the System's overuse and abuse of temporary
assignments, the Board of Governors adopted a
policy of "equal pay for equal work"
in 1977.
Board of Governor's Policy on
Pro Rata Pay, Adopted March, 1977
The Board of Governors finds no basis for differing
pay schedules for full-time and part-time Community
College faculty members where in class and out
of class responsibilities are the same. Therefore,
in such instances the Board of Governors supports
equal pay for equal work (pro rata pay). In instances
where part-time faculty have less than the same
responsibilities for out of class activities the
Board of Governors favors pro rata pay for them
equal to that which would be paid to full-time
instructors for similar classroom activities.
At the same time, the Board
determined that no more than 25% of credit instruction
should be taught by part-time instructors. While
AB 1725 attempted to address the issue of the
ratio of full- to part-time faculty in 1988, the
Legislature had not addressed the issue of part-time
faculty compensation before the 1998-99 legislative
session, despite repeated concern raised within
the System and by CPEC.
By January 1999, faculty organizations
were developing legislation to address many part-time
faculty issues. At the same time, Chancellor Nussbaum,
facing growing concern by the Board of Governors,
put together a "working paper," Important
Historical Data, Trends, and Analysis Relevant
to Full-time/Part-time Issues. The Chancellor
called particular attention to the role of chronic
system underfunding in the system's inability
to "sustain any consistent degree of progress"
on the Board's 1977 policies that (1) a minimum
of 75% of credit instruction should be by full-time
faculty, and (2) equal work should receive equal
compensation. He also called for the system to
consider developing "systemwide 'guidelines'
that either recommend or establish what constitutes
pro-rata pay," and for the system to "engage
in a comprehensive study of part-time instruction,"
noting that "[t]he lack of current data has
hindered us in not only understanding the nature
and extent of the problems, but also the best
means of attacking them."
Assembly Bill 420 (Wildman)
AB 420, in its initial form,
would have required that "each person employed
by a community college district as a temporary
academic employee shall be compensated at a salary
or hourly rate that is directly proportional to
the salary of a full-time regular employee with
comparable training and experience." It would
also have established in law a minimum of part-time
faculty benefits pro-rated with regard to full-time
faculty benefits as well as a seniority-based
system of preference for reappointment of part-time
faculty continuously employed for three academic
years.
Though the bill rapidly passed
through Assembly committees and on to the Senate
Education Committee, concerns were raised by the
Chancellor's Office and local college and district
administrators regarding the seniority-based rehire
provisions. They argued that such provisions would
reduce the ability of the colleges to hire a more
diverse faculty. To save the principles within
the legislation and retain the less controversial
expansion of the health benefits and office hour
programs, further amendments were offered.
In its final form as signed
by the Governor, AB 420 retained its support of
the principle of "equal pay for equal work"
for part-time faculty in California community
colleges and directed the CPEC to
…conduct a comprehensive
study of the California Community College system's
part-time faculty employment, salary, and compensation
patterns as they relate to full-time community
college faculty with similar education credentials
and work experience. …The study…shall
include the addressing of policy options available
to achieve pay equity between community college
part-time faculty and full-time faculty…
While issues regarding funding
delayed the CPEC study, the Joint Legislative
Audit Committee (JLAC) called an informational
hearing to spotlight part-time faculty issues.
Joint Legislative Audit Committee
(JLAC) Hearings on Part Time Faculty Use
The JLAC hearing on "California
Community College Use of Part-time Faculty"
in January 2000 evidenced clear legislative concern
about the issues; legislators were openly critical
of the slow pace of system and CPEC responses
to the legislature's interests. The committee
requested that the California State Auditor report
on the compensation of part-time teaching faculty
within the California Community College System.
The California State Auditor's
Report
In June 2000, the California
Bureau of State Audits issued its report, California
Community Colleges: Part-Time Faculty Are Compensated
Less than Full-Time Faculty for Teaching Activities.
The report fundamentally confirmed many of the
concerns that had been raised over the past twenty-seven
years. It estimated that an additional $144 million
"would be needed annually to eliminate existing
pay differences between all part-time and full-time
faculty for teaching activities" under current
patterns of part-time faculty use. It should be
noted that the report developed its recommendations
based on current patterns of part-time faculty
use but did not consider the propriety of these
current practices.
Central to the Bureau of State
Audits' analysis, while recognizing significant
variations across the CCC system, was a set of
assumptions about what constituted normal professional
and contractual expectations for teaching activities.
Their determinations were predicated on the following
methodology:
1. A full-time teaching load
is generally accepted to be the equivalent of
15 credit hours of instruction per week.
2. For each hour of instruction,
we assumed that a faculty member would spend,
on average, 1 additional hour per week for preparation,
grading, and evaluation-related activities. This
adds 15 teaching-related hours per week.
3. For each class taught, we
assumed that a faculty member would spend, on
average, 1 hour per week in office hours. Assuming
that a standard class is 3 [semester] credit hours,
a teaching load of 15 credit hours translates
to 5 office hours per week.
4. Adding these three components,
we arrived at a 35 hour teaching week. We then
added 5 weekly hours for nonteaching activities
to arrive at a 40 hour workweek….Translated
into percentages, these numbers showed that about
88% of a full-time faculty member's work hours
are spent on teaching-related activities. The
remaining 12% of the full-time salary is assumed
to be for non-teaching activities, such as curriculum
development and committee work, which part-time
faculty are generally not required to perform.
These assumptions raise many
questions about the nature of faculty professionalism
and work expectations, both in terms of what are
the current practices in California community
colleges, and in terms of what should be the practice
from an academic and professional perspective.
For example, while assuming
a standard 15 unit (weekly class hour) work load
for full-time faculty is consistent with Chancellor's
Office MIS data, the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) has long argued that faculty
loads in undergraduate education should be a maximum
of 12 credit hours per week. They add that, from
observation of institutions noted for "the
effectiveness of their faculties in teaching and
scholarship," a 9 credit hour load should
be preferred for undergraduate instruction.
The basis for assuming the numbers
of 15 hours, 5 hours, and 5 hours, for the three
areas of faculty activity outside of the classroom
seems to be the assumption of a 40-hour workweek.
The fact is that most reports on the faculty workweek
are significantly higher. Even the conservative
U.S. Department of Education, National Center
for Education Statistics' 1999 National Study
of Postsecondary Faculty reports a 54.4 hours
per week average for all full-time instructional
faculty and staff, with an average classroom load
of 11 credit hours per week. In public two-year
institutions, the average class size was found
to be 24.7 students. This is consistent with the
Chancellor's Office's data which has reported
average CCC class sizes about 10 students higher
than the national average . One could infer that
much of the 14.4-hour additional workweek is devoted
to additional class preparation, grading, and
student advising/tutoring/guidance outside of
regular class time. This would suggest that a
91% figure for teaching-related duties in CCCs
is more accurate than the 88% cited in the Report.
Most importantly, the State
Auditor's Report assumes that the so-called "non-teaching
activities, such as curriculum development and
committee work" are not (and, implicitly,
should not be) a part of the professional expectations
of part-time faculty employment. The Academic
Senate maintains a principled perspective while
confronting the current and historical economic
realities impinging on academic and professional
matters. What is the case may often not be what
should be the case. This paper will return to
these issues.
The California Postsecondary
Education Commission (CPEC) Report
The CPEC Report, published in
April 2001 after a one-year delay, has already
been referred to several times above. However,
a broader consideration of the Report's recommendations
is important. While generally more comprehensive
than the State Auditor's study, and based on a
broader sample of CCC districts, the CPEC study
largely confirmed prior concerns and studies.
The CPEC Report makes five primary recommendations.
First and foremost,
The Commission recommends that
statewide policy be articulated regarding the
minimum/core functions which faculty within the
California Community Colleges are expected to
provide. Once established, the State may choose
to become involved in the support of core function
activities, while overall salary decisions are
left to the determination of local districts and
allowed to reflect responsiveness to local market
forces, collective bargaining negotiations, or
other priorities/concerns identified by local
districts.
In discussing this recommendation,
the Commission noted, "there is no consistent
definition of those core services which should
be available to students through their course
instructors, regardless of their employment status.
… [This] allows the potential for student
needs to be compromised." Significantly,
the Commission recommends that "faculty,
whether full-time or part-time, should be accessible
to students outside of class time through office
hours. … [The] Commission believes that the
statewide policy should recognize that faculty
accessibility is a critical component of student
learning."
The Commission's other four
recommendations include the following:
The Commission recommends
that local community college districts be
encouraged to develop salary schedules for
part-time faculty members which have structures
more comparable to that of full-time faculty.
The Commission recommends
local community college districts examine
the current distribution of compensation resources
among part-time and full-time faculty within
their district, particularly in those districts
where the difference between full-time and
part-time faculty salaries is greatest.
The Commission recommends
further exploration of how community college
districts could provide benefits as a component
of compensation.
The Commission recommends
an ongoing comprehensive, centralized, and
independent data gathering effort to provide
policymakers with information on both part-time
and full-time faculty.
The Commission provided a somewhat
different analysis of full-time faculty duties
than that provided by the Bureau of State Auditors.
The Auditor's report divided faculty duties into
"teaching," "non-teaching,"
and "other" activities. The "other"
classification was used simply to handle ambiguous
contract language where little distinction between
various professional activities was drawn. The
Auditor's Report further divided teaching activities
into "lecture," "preparation,"
and "office hours." Few district agreements
specified preparation as a separate duty, but
all specified some minimum office hour obligation.
The CPEC report, on the other
hand, divided faculty activities into "instruction,"
"preparation," "grading,"
"office hours," "advising,"
"administrative," and "other."
This report then identified "instruction,"
"preparation," "grading,"
and "office hours," as "teaching-related
activities," treating "advising,"
"administrative," and "other,"
as non-teaching activities. CPEC staff did not
provide any rationale for the separation of advising
and curriculum-related activities from teaching
activities, nor for the inclusion of curriculum-related
activities in administrative activities. In addition,
while the "other" classification on
the survey provided for respondents to fill in
a description of the activities being reported,
the CPEC report does not explain the nature of
these activities.
Using this classification of
what constitutes teaching activities, CPEC calculated
that, on average 81% of a full-time faculty member's
activities were teaching-related (19% were the
sum of advising, administrative, and other activities).
Recognizing that the distinction between "advising"
and "office hours" is based largely
on contractual language rather than the teaching-related
nature of the work, and that elements of the "administrative"
and "other" classifications would more
appropriately be classified as teaching-related,
we can see the CPEC study as a confirmation of
the State Auditor's determination that part-time
faculty are currently expected to fulfill 88%
of the duties of a full-time faculty member. Further,
since CPEC, like the State Auditor's assumptions,
ignored the fact that faculty report working significantly
more than the standard 40-hour week, the CPEC
analysis supports the view that the current teaching
activities of full-time faculty are about 90-91%
of their total professional activities.
Confidence in this interpretation
is heightened by noticing that the CPEC study
showed considerable part-time faculty activity
in all areas categorized as non-teaching activities,
even though they received no compensation for
such work. In fact, that the reported activities
of full-time and part-time faculty are sufficiently
similar in all areas, and generally show parallel
differentiation when compared by discipline, makes
it clear the professional expectations of part-time
faculty themselves motivate them to do significant
work for which they receive no compensation at
all.
Overall, it should be emphasized
that the Commission focused on "minimum/core
functions which faculty within the CCC are expected
to provide." While this does move beyond
the focus on current practice seen in the State
Auditor's report, the CPEC Report does not address
the principled question of what should be the
professional expectations for faculty, although
the report does recommend that statewide policies
be articulated regarding these expectations.
A 1994 report by The American
Association of University Professors' (AAUP) Committee
C on College and University Teaching, Research,
and Publication called attention to workload differences
among disciplines as well as among various types
of institutions. The authors noted that, "The
need to accept and deal with the realities of
the different missions and obligations of the
vast span of institutions of higher learning is
a matter of critical importance." (Academe,
Jan. - Feb. 1994).
In clarifying these "realities,"
the AAUP report continued:
Teaching must be understood
to embrace a very wide range of activities. Work
counted as course load in the classroom or in
the laboratory is a central part, but only a part,
of what actually constitutes teaching in higher
education. Work with individual students on their
projects, faculty student planning of curricula
and courses of study, one-on-one supervision of
research, informal interactions on or off campus,
are but some of the forms of teaching that most
faculty members are engaged in on a regular basis.
In addition to these activities,
we must add professional service of community
college faculty to their institution and community
that prepares and enhances the faculty member's
ability to teach. Curriculum and program development
and maintenance with attention to articulation
and program integration are essential if the teacher
is to be an informed aid to the student. Participation
in governance committee work is a necessary part
of professional development and the integration
of faculty members into their academic community.
Service with disciplinary organizations and the
community at-large play a crucial role in a faculty
member's ability to remain current in their field
and connected to the life of the community in
which students live. Research and experimentation
in teaching and learning are an ongoing necessity,
especially important in community colleges with
their multifaceted student population. In fact,
the professional demands on the time of higher
education faculty are so great that no static
analysis or "unbundling" of professional
expectations can reflect the true complexity.
Rather, each faculty member's unique career will
reflect very different focuses of activity from
week to week during an academic term, and from
year to year during the growth and development
of that career.
The Academic Senate is concerned
that the ability of temporary faculty to fulfill
their professional obligations is compromised
by their current exclusion from the full range
of faculty duties. The Academic Senate also asks
whether the long-term value of these faculty to
the system and their students is further weakened
and their careers shortened by their exclusion
from professional development and sabbatical leave
opportunities. Personal and professional renewal
have been long recognized as a necessity for the
ongoing ability of educators to retain the commitment
and energy needed by their institution's educational
mission.
Many part-time faculty take
their first position soon after leaving graduate
school, anticipating that they will gain experience
and pedagogical expertise that will enhance their
professional abilities, and that this experience
will strengthen their candidacy for a tenure track
appointment. In fact, the poor quality of part-time
faculty hiring practices and evaluation, coupled
with unprofessional working conditions and a lack
of professional development opportunities, has
created circumstances in which experience as a
part-time teacher can be more a hindrance than
a help in furthering an academic career.
Part-time Issues Task Force
and Consultation Discussions
After the Board of Governors
became engaged with part-time faculty issues in
Fall 1998, the Full-Time and Part-Time Faculty
Task Force, convened earlier to broadly review
the full-time/part-time regulations, focused on
questions concerning inaccuracies in district
reporting of their full-time/part-time faculty
ratio. A secondary focus was on the continued
inability of the System to secure a budget augmentation
for the conversion of part-time faculty positions
to full-time positions. In the background was
the Board's desire that discussion of these narrow
issues be expanded. Talk of seeking a "comprehensive
solution" to the problems created by the
use of part-time faculty had emerged.
The Task Force remained focused
on clarifying regulations regarding the full-time/part-time
ratio during most of 1999. Consensus was reached
on a package of changes that included a shift
in the 75% minimum of credit instruction taught
by full-time faculty to a measure of full-time
equivalent (FTE) faculty, and clarified the methods
for computing the relevant numbers of full-time
and part-time faculty. Their work also led to
agreement on a method for determining compliance
using the State's Management Information System.
Early in the budget planning
cycle for 2001-2002, there was Consultation consensus
for a $75 million part-time faculty compensation
equity line item in the System's budget proposal.
This was understood to be approximately 1/3 of
the total augmentation needed to achieve equal-pay
for equal work based on Chancellor's Office staff
calculations. These calculations were quite rough
since the actual meaning of "equal pay for
equal work" had never been specified.
In Fall 2000, Board of Governors'
Member Amy Dean developed an innovative proposal
to attempt resolving the flexibility needs of
the colleges while providing full-time positions
for part-time faculty teaching a full load across
multiple districts. In November 2000, a Part-time
Faculty Issues Task Force met to work out details
of the budget proposal and an additional item
was added for a Pilot Project.
During Spring 2001, discussions
in this Task Force, focused on developing the
details of the Interdistrict Faculty Pilot Project.
Principles were developed for choosing districts
to participate in the Pilot Project, announcing
positions, hiring, evaluation, tenure review,
compensation and benefits. The goal was for faculty
hired under the project to become regular full-time
faculty in the primary district by the end of
the tenure process. A timeline to allow positions
to begin in Fall 2002 was developed. One and a
half million dollars ($1.5 million) was proposed
in the 2001-2002 System budget, but was not adopted
by the Governor in his January Budget. Deteriorating
fiscal conditions did not allow for the program's
funding in the final budget even though the Governor
and the Legislature remained committed to $57
million support of the part-time faculty compensation
fund.
During the summer of fall of
2001, the Part-time Issues Task Force turned its
attention back to developing consensus on Board
policy and standards to achieve equal pay for
equal work. It was agreed that, since many districts
compensated full-time faculty overloads on their
part-time faculty schedule, there was no reasonable
way to disallow use of Part-time Faculty Compensation
Fund money for such overloads. However, no agreement
could be reached on minimum state standards for
the professional expectations for part-time faculty.
Since the total state fiscal cost of the program
would depend on the total work being funded, the
question became, just what work should be expected
of full-time faculty that could be excluded from
the expectations of part-time faculty? District
administrator and trustee representatives expressed
fear that they would be held accountable for state
standards without the money to pay for them, even
if language were included that expressly tied
progress toward achieving a standard to state
funding. Faculty representatives argued that without
statewide standards, many districts would continue
to overuse and abuse part-time faculty employed
on temporary assignments, and thus, students would
continue to be denied equitable educational experiences.
The faculty position was partially supported by
the CPEC recommendation "that statewide policy
be articulated regarding the minimum/core functions
which faculty within the California Community
Colleges are expected to provide."
However, with growing pressure
from the Board of Governors, strong support by
the Legislature for the part-time faculty compensation
augmentation of the System budget, and a practical
need to maintain Consultation consensus on the
System budget, language was proposed by the Chancellor
that would create a broadly stated board policy
while pressuring local negotiators to work out
detailed definitions of "parity" within
the context of local circumstances. If local control
again failed, faculty felt it would be necessary
to revisit the idea of statewide minimum standards,
either in Consultation, or in the legislative
arena.
Board of Governors Policy Statement
on Part-time Faculty Compensation
Adopted on September 10, 2001
[Extract]:
The Board of Governors supports
the policy that part-time faculty should be paid
comparably to full-time faculty for those in-class
and out-of-class responsibilities that are the
same. In instances where part-time faculty have
fewer of the same responsibilities for out-of-class
activities, the Board of Governors supports the
policy that part-time faculty should be paid comparably
to full-time faculty for those professional responsibilities
expected equally of full- and part-time faculty.
The specific definitions and
policies regarding comparable pay are to be determined
locally, through the collective bargaining process.
The Board of Governors recognizes that the specific
definitions and policies negotiated locally will
vary.
Of particular importance here,
one must be aware of the following language of
the attendant Board of Governors Implementation
Policy
…As a condition of participating
in the program and being eligible to receive infusions
beyond the level provided in the first year, the
district must have bargained its definition of
"parity" before the middle of the second
year (essentially by January or February of 2003,
just before the apportionment goes out). A district
not reaching agreement regarding "parity"
will retain its first year allocation, and will
again become eligible for allocations beyond this
level when it provides its locally bargained definition
of "parity."
Thus, districts will begin to
lose their share of future appropriations if local
definitions and policies establishing comparable
pay have not been negotiated by early 2003. Also,
without local definitions and policies, the Chancellor's
Office will not be able to calculate the needs
of such districts for future requests from the
state to augment the Part-time Faculty Compensation
Fund.
The Board Policy Statement is
completely silent on the specific nature of "those
professional responsibilities expected equally
of full- and part-time faculty." However,
in summarizing the background discussions of the
Part-time Issues Task Force as a guide to aid
districts in thinking through their definitions
and policies in regard to parity, the Chancellor
noted that, "When we look at the CPEC and
other studies, we see that the core functions
of teaching involve classroom instruction, preparation
and grading, and office hours. … The State
has a reasonable expectation that any faculty
member (full-time or part-time) who is instructing
should also be preparing for class, grading papers,
and holding office hours." Later in the same
document, the Chancellor noted that, "…
if part-time faculty are given the responsibility
to advise students, they too should be compensated
in accordance with the principle of comparable
pay for comparable work…"
Throughout the discussion in
the Task Force, the distinction has been regularly
maintained between what is the practice and what
should be the practice regarding employment issues.
Thus, the task before district administrators
and faculty in trying to reach agreement on "specific
definitions and policies regarding comparable
pay for comparable work" will require definitions
and policies regarding "those professional
responsibilities expected equally of full- and
part-time faculty." While the Education Employee
Relations Act (EERA) and the budget language of
the 2001 Part-time Faculty Compensation Fund clearly
determine that these are to be negotiable items,
there is also little doubt that these negotiations
will have direct and/or indirect impact on all
of the academic and professional matters enumerated
in Title 5 Regulations.
Consequently, while consultation
between local academic senates and collective
bargaining units is always important, consultation
with regard to establishing these local definitions
and policies requires especially close cooperation
between local academic senates and collective
bargaining units unless the definitions and policies
are reduced to a mere determination of what is
currently the case with no implication of what
should be the case from an academic and professional
point of view. The situation is similar to the
establishment of district hiring and tenure review
policies where policies are determined by joint
agreement between the local board and academic
senate and then negotiated into contract language.
In neither case can working conditions be separated
from their academic and professional implications.
Considering also that the outcome
of the negotiated definitions and policies will
be used in calculating future state financial
support of the entire system, the Academic Senate
believes it imperative that this process not be
allowed to fix the current practices of the districts
as a de facto standard supported by future fiscal
projections. Rather, local senates should exercise
their authority over academic and professional
matters to assure that the standards set be professionally
sound, based on the nature of the higher education
enterprise and the needs of community college
students. If the current low professional expectations
of part-time faculty become the negotiated standard,
it will sanction low quality institutions providing
low quality education, no matter what access and
quantity are achieved.
Further, the Academic Senate
recommends that, if local processes are unable
to establish definitions and policies that assure
all students receive educational opportunities
with equitable institutional support, whether
they be in a class section assigned to a part-time
or a full-time faculty member, then the Academic
Senate should work through the consultation process
to establish high standards in Board of Governors'
Policy, Title 5, and/or in the Education Code.
Non-instructional Faculty
Throughout the preceding discussion,
the focus has been on instructional faculty. Employment
structures of many non-instructional faculty define
load as "time on station," and thus,
professional duties outside of their primary area
(counseling, library work, etc.) result automatically
in a reduction of their primary duties. However,
some districts define non-instructional faculty
load at a reduced level with the undefined assumption
of other professional duties as part of professional
expectations. It is important that, in developing
the definitions and policies regarding comparable
pay for comparable work, care be taken not to
create inequities either within the ranks of non-instructional
faculty or between non-instructional and instructional
faculty. However, the general recommendation that
we seek the highest professional expectations
equally of all faculty remains valid.
SECTION III. Defining the Professional
Expectations of Faculty
Faculty professionalism in higher
education has grown out of the very same dialectical
processes that underlie learning, research and
knowledge. Educational professionals recognize
the fallibility and narrowness of finite individuals
situated within their unique historical circumstances.
As experimentation and critical peer review move
discipline subjectivity toward a surer approximation
of the truth, so the committee processes of shared
governance help assure a more incisive response
to problems that emerge out of an institution's
efforts to realize the ideals of its mission.
In both of these processes, the individual is
the source of creativity, discovery, and progress,
but in both, the dialogue of the community restrains
impulsive enthusiasm, challenges uncritical attitudes,
and refreshes perspectives.
The same can be said for program
and curriculum development and maintenance, and
for pedagogy. The work of faculty must constantly
adjust and change as focus shifts from one individual
student to another within the multi-faceted community
college student population. Similarly, with historical
changes in the culture and community from year
to year and generation to generation, patterns
of response, content, and discipline expertise
itself must be adjusted. An institution's quality
and the quality of its students' education will
necessarily be degraded to the extent that faculty
are excluded from these processes, and will be
improved to the extent that faculty are integrated
within the academic community as a whole.
Before concluding the Academic
Senate paper, A Re-examination of Faculty Hiring
Processes and Procedures, adopted fall 2000, the
authors wrote,
Though technically the work
of the hiring committee is completed once the
board has formally hired the new faculty members,
whether full-time or part-time faculty, the obligation
of the entire institution just begins. From assigning
the newcomers a mailbox and securing signatures
on appropriate forms to explaining the discipline's
curriculum and assisting with methodological and
pedagogical questions, staff, faculty and administrators
have responsibilities to integrate new hires into
the work of the department and the institution.
The Academic Senate has a particular responsibility
to address issues of new faculty orientation,
given their primary responsibility for faculty
development processes outlined in Title 5, §532000.
While orientation and mentoring
of new faculty [are] more generally provided to
full-time hires, it should be noted that part-time
faculty also are in need of such attentions. In
fact, given the conditions of part-time faculty
employment, the use of orientation and mentoring
to integrate part-time faculty into educational
programs is critical for the quality and consistency
of students' educational experiences. Part-time
faculty are all too often institutionally disconnected,
and kept unaware even of curriculum expectations
and practices at the department level. Local academic
senates can work to mitigate these challenges
with the inclusion of part-time faculty in well-designed
orientation and mentoring programs.
What permeates this discussion
of the beginning of a faculty career, as most
discussions of the work of faculty, is the importance
placed on the integrated whole. Classroom instruction
and pedagogy receive mention as one area of many,
neither more nor less important than many others.
It must also be noted that,
because California's use of part-time faculty
in community colleges is greater than in most
states, and because faculty loads in CCCs are
among the highest instructional loads anywhere,
faculty throughout higher education are watching
our response. Most faculty leaders understand
the pattern of use and abuse of contingent academic
labor as one of the most insidious and severe
of many threats to faculty professionalism, tenure,
and shared governance. Our colleagues are hoping
that California will create a model response that
will influence other institutions so they will
not have to degenerate to the level of exploitation
we have faced. In this respect, California part-time
faculty have been referred to as the "canary
in the coal mine" of modern corporate higher
education.
Consequently, the Academic Senate
recommends that local senates work with their
local collective bargaining unit, district administration,
and board of trustees to establish principled
definitions and policies regarding part-time faculty
pay equity, "comparable pay for comparable
work," and what should be the professional
expectations of all faculty.
Employment Stability and Security
Academic Freedom and Professional
Careers
Faculty professionalism grows
within the context of the individual faculty member's
career, and this growth is a function of institutional
and collegial support. The right of faculty to
academic freedom, protected by tenure and a rigorous
due process legal structure, has been an essential
part of this professionalism since the early nineteen
hundreds. The Academic Senate has consistently
supported the importance of academic freedom as
central to California community college faculty
professionalism, reaffirming its position most
recently in Academic Freedom and Tenure: A Faculty
Perspective, adopted Spring 1998. Responding to
a Spring 1996 resolution, this paper asserted
the importance of academic freedom guarantees
for part-time as well as full-time faculty. The
paper recognized the vulnerability of untenured
faculty and called upon tenured faculty to exercise
their responsibility by protecting their untenured
colleagues and informing them of their academic
freedom rights.
Academic freedom policies without
the protection of tenure and due process, too
readily remain empty words. Part-time faculty
can be hired and fired at the whim of arbitrary
and capricious decisions by administrators and/or
full-time faculty, acting under the authority
of local boards and the Education Code §87742
reads, "Governing boards of community college
districts may dismiss temporary employees at any
time at the pleasure of the board." Even
dismissal is unnecessary since, except where some
form of reemployment preference has been negotiated
into a local contract, part-time faculty may be
simply denied a new assignment.
Faculty Diversity
The Academic Senate has consistently
taken the position that it has professional, ethical,
and legal responsibilities to address the demographic
balance of the faculty and to advocate for fair
and effective hiring practices. Any steps that
might, even inadvertently, undermine this commitment
need careful scrutiny.
For example, legislation to
secure seniority-based rehire rights for part-time
faculty must avoid the potential for such rights
to interfere with attempts to further diversify
the faculty. Historically, part-time teaching
has been understood to be a significant entry
point into a full-time position; thus the recruitment
and retention of a diverse part-time faculty is
correspondingly important in moving successfully
to a goal of having full-time faculty hires mirror
the diversity of the students and the state that
we serve. Given that part-time faculty hiring
processes are often less extensive than those
for full-time faculty it should not be surprising
to find less overall diversity in the part-time
faculty ranks.
Absent a full commitment to
fair and effective hiring practices, the tendency
to replicate the existing labor force is predictable.
However, the lack of hiring processes that mirror
those of full-time faculty may be the source of
the problem; in that case, rehire rights or seniority
per se will not necessarily hinder diversification.
It will be essential that any moves toward institutionalizing
seniority-based hiring rights be accompanied by
a rigorous and renewed effort to comply with state
law and regulation with regard to fair and effective
hiring practices, for all faculty, full-time and
part-time.
In addition to implementing
fair and effective hiring practices, further steps
need to be taken to diversify faculty. Faculty
mentoring programs that create "pipeline
strategies" for developing and recruiting
diverse faculty directly from graduate school
have shown great promise regionally and, as the
Senate has repeatedly requested, should be replicated
on a statewide basis.
In considering the interaction
of employment status and diversity, a deeper examination
of the available data reveals a complicated picture
regarding faculty diversity as evidenced in hiring
patterns.
If legislated seniority-based
rehire rights were to reduce the number of new
faculty positions opened, and if the present pool
of part-time faculty with new seniority rights
were itself not ideally diverse, then such legislation
could reduce the opportunities to address this
long-standing imbalance. Thus, there has been
a concern that rehire rights could further embed
an under-representation of key groups among full-time
and part-time faculty.
The accompanying chart describes
CCC faculty over the past 18 years. The top line
(dots) indicates the percentage of total part-time
faculty who were non-Hispanic white, while the
second line (squares) from the top gives the percentage
of total full-time faculty in this same ethnic
group (non-Hispanic white). The third (triangles)
and fourth (stars) lines on the chart give the
percentage of total part-time and full-time faculty
who were new hires in each year. It seems clear
that there is little if any correlation between
the rate of diversification (the top two lines
of the graph) and the number of available positions
for new hires (the bottom two lines of the graph).
It should be noted that there
has been continuous, though far from adequate,
progress in the diversification of both full-time
tenured and part-time non-tenured faculty. Until
the last two years, the rate of diversification
of part-time faculty has generally lagged behind
that of full-time faculty. In the 1998 to 2000
period, the difference between the diversity of
part-time compared to full-time faculty has been
narrowed. It is unclear what may have caused this
significant change. It will be important to see
if this trend continues, and to see if it is possible
to ascertain the underlying reasons for it. It
is possible that the more recent trend toward
increased diversity from 1988 to the present are
the result of post-AB 1725 efforts to increase
the available pool of diverse faculty candidates.
This is an area where further research might prove
fruitful.
Several districts (for example,
Foothill/De Anza, San Francisco, and Los Angeles)
that have achieved the most diverse faculty, and/or
that have made continuous improvements better
than the state average, have strong part-time
faculty reemployment provisions in their negotiated
contracts.
Such examples suggest that,
by itself, having a re-employment provision may
not automatically negatively impact a district's
ability to hire diverse faculty. Rather, it appears
that many, interrelated variables are at work.
On the other hand, increased stability of the
faculty created by seniority based rehire rights
would arguably be a benefit to programs, the curriculum,
and to students. Such rights would certainly improve
the morale of two-thirds of the faculty while
probably reducing the administrative load; it
would likely reduce the high rate of new part-time
faculty hires, and allow for improved hiring and
evaluation practices for part-time faculty. It
is also possible that employment security may
make teaching a more attractive opportunity for
highly qualified potential faculty who have multiple
options for a career path.
Thus, a more comprehensive and
detailed study of districts that have been most
successful in diversifying their faculty needs
to be undertaken. Districts that have made greatest
gains in diversifying their faculty appear to
be in larger metropolitan communities that have
more diverse populations. It also appears that
these same districts are more likely to have progressive
part-time faculty agreements including seniority
based rehire rights. A comprehensive study would
clarify many such speculative considerations and
help illuminate whether tenure or seniority based
rehire rights for part-time faculty would impact
districts' ability to diversify the faculty in
California's community colleges.
Central to these issues is the
full implementation of fair and effective hiring
practices for part-time faculty positions. As
this paper noted earlier in discussing the Academic
Senate papers on faculty hiring, while anecdotal
evidence suggests part-time faculty hiring guidelines
and regulations may be given lip-service but not
followed in practice, no systematic review has
yet been undertaken. Failure to follow system
guidelines raises serious legal issues and may
be negatively impacting the ability of colleges
to achieve a more balanced diversity of their
faculty. Dovetailing new part-time employment
policies with a strong commitment to diversity
will require concerted and committed action on
the part of local senates in cooperation with
bargaining agents and district administrations.
Flexibility
It has often been argued that
the use of part-time faculty on temporary assignment
is needed for the colleges to adjust to the natural
fluctuations in enrollment. However, long and
short-term trends suggest that this need has been
significantly overstated. The table
below presents the total number of full-time
equivalent students (FTES) as they have changed
year to year from 1965 to the present (see labeled
Column 1), and the percentage increase or decrease
of each year from the preceding year (Column 2).
The growth and variation has been remarkably continuous
except for the period of fluctuation following
the passage of Proposition 13 (June 1978). Unstable
funding led to about seven years during which
FTES varied significantly. From 1981 to 1984,
this turmoil was magnified by an economic recession,
leading to a yearly seesaw of 7 to 10%.
However, Columns 4 and 7, noting
the percentage change of part-time and full-time
faculty, respectively show that, during this same
period of time, both part-time and full-time faculty
were being hired into the System at only slightly
different rates than in normal years. The significant
reductions of part-time faculty reported in 1982-83
and 1983-84, as noted previously, were a result
of program cuts made by the Legislature in response
to the early 80s recession. It is significant
in this respect that the districts reported a
fairly normal 17% level of new part-time faculty
hires in 1982 (Column 5), just when there was
an anomalous 15% decline in the total number of
part-time faculty.
The only other significant decline
in the numbers of part-time faculty is the 8%
decline in Fall 1991 (Column 4). It was at this
time, during the early 1990's recession, that
the Legislature reduced CCC funding by 4.25% in
constant dollars. This was coupled with four prior
years' commitments to new full-time faculty hires
as the System was recovering from the economic
recession of the early 1980s. It must be noted
that, even with this severe shock to the system,
new hires of part-time faculty remained at 13
to 20% (Column 5). While the decline in numbers
of full-time faculty (Column 7) may account for
some of this, one can only speculate what factors
might have led to this remarkable fact. However,
a look at the fall new hire rates for the available
years, 1982 to the present (missing 1997 and 1999),
it is clear that even though the CCCs absorb almost
the entire fluctuation of demand for higher education,
normal rates of faculty turnover have more than
compensated for even the worst enrollment declines.
Of greater concern than "flexibility"
to the quality of the System, and to its ability
to provide for California's growing CCC student
population, is the huge burden created by the
need for such a constantly high rate of faculty
hiring. There are no real estimates of the actual
costs of administrative workload and full-time
faculty time in hiring part-time faculty, but
if one were to project costs based on even one-half
the cost per full-time hire, the numbers would
be staggering.
There is legitimate need to
employ part-time faculty to provide flexibility
in opening new programs, incorporating needed
expertise not present among the full-time faculty
of a given program, and providing for various
specialized vocational programs. However, the
predominant use of part-time faculty is now in
the core general education and transfer related
programs. In program areas such as the humanities,
social sciences, and inter-disciplinary studies,
part-time faculty instruction is approaching and/or
surpassing 50% of the totals.
The projected FTES growth over
the next 5-10 years caused by the "Baby Boom
Echo" will put a severe strain on CCC faculty
hiring. This can already be seen in the data from
the Chancellor's Office's 2000 Staffing Report.
Full-time faculty participation on hiring and
tenure review committees is stretching the limited
numbers of full-time faculty and limited administrative
resources to the limit. There can be little doubt
that implementation of rigorous part-time hiring
standards will continue to suffer. One likely
outcome will be a decrease in constructive part-time
faculty evaluation, already known to be weak.
Faculty in need of improvement will be rehired
with little help to improve their teaching effectiveness.
It seems clear that retaining the best of part-time
faculty by providing job security and competitive
compensation packages may be the only choice to
avoid decreasing quality of programs and/or decreasing
access for the state's neediest students. Moving
many of these faculty members into full-time positions
would also significantly reduce the mounting pressures.
AB 1245 (Alquist): Rehire Rights
Many attempts have been made
over the years to establish seniority based rehire
rights for qualified part-time faculty with positive
evaluations. These have been gaining support in
the Legislature, but none has made it into law.
In the 2001-2002 Legislative Session, AB 1245
took the approach that the complexities of the
issues might better be dealt with at the local
level where full discussions could take place.
The bill, as signed and chaptered into law, added
the following section to the Education Code.
87482.9. This section applies
only to temporary and part-time faculty within
the meaning of Section 87482.5. The issue of earning
and retaining of annual reappointment rights shall
be a mandatory subject of negotiation with respect
to the collective bargaining process relating
to any new or successor contract $between community
college districts and temporary or part-time faculty
occurring on or after January 1, 2002.
A year ago, the Part-time Issues
Task Force determined that over a dozen local
districts had negotiated various forms of rehire
rights ranging from the robust protections of
some districts which approach the provisions of
tenure to simple policies of preference under
some conditions for reassignment to the same class
should it be offered again.
It is not clear whether forcing
districts to the table will yield any significant
gains, but the bill has generated new interest
in the issues and further educated policy makers
about the problem. Clearly any comprehensive solution
to the problems created by current CCC use of
part-time faculty will have to address the issues
of fair and effective hiring processes, regular
evaluation, job security linked to positive evaluation,
and the guarantee of academic freedom.
SECTION IV. The Issue of Part-time
Faculty Tenure
Academic freedom remains a freedom
and protection only in principle in the absence
of mechanisms to protect it. Organizations such
as the American Association of University Professors
(AAUP) can bring some pressure on institutions
that do not respect academic freedom. Also, the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)
currently makes having an academic freedom policy
a requirement for accreditation.
Tenure, however, remains the
mechanism within a college that most fully protects
a regular faculty member from arbitrary and capricious
treatment. Tenure is not advantageous to faculty
alone. Students benefit from faculty members who
are sufficiently secure in their assignments that
they can discharge their duties without fear of
reprisal. The academic freedom of students must
also be strongly protected by their instructors,
and instructors without protection are in no position
to be strong advocates for their students. Further,
the institution whose faculty enjoy academic freedom
and are protected by tenure can better fulfill
its mission. The AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles
on Academic Freedom and Tenure makes the point
forcefully:
Tenure is a means to certain
ends; specifically: (a) freedom of teaching and
research and extramural activities; and (b) a
sufficient degree of economic security to make
the profession attractive to men and women of
ability. Freedom and economic security, hence,
tenure, are indispensable to the success of an
institution in fulfilling its obligations to its
students and to society.
When one considers the depth
and breadth of the increasing problems created
by using temporary part-time assignments within
regular educational programs, the natural question
that must be asked is, Why have a separate employment
structure at all? Clearly there are legitimate
needs for temporary faculty for the short-term
replacement of tenured faculty who are on leave
or temporary reassignment, or to make occasional
adjustments to the irregular enrollment patterns
faced by the colleges. New and experimental programs
may also need temporary hires to establish their
viability and stability. However, except for short-term
substitutions, most of these needs would better
be served by full year hires, some part-time and
some full-time, with the intent of continuance
rather than single term part-time temporary assignments.
In fact, the Education Code has specific provisions
to allow full-time temporary replacements of regular
and contract faculty on leave and for adjusting
to enrollment increases. However, few districts
take advantage of these provisions since negotiated
agreements usually place all full-time faculty
on the same salary schedule creating a fiscal
disincentive.
One of the often overlooked
consequences of current "enrollment management"
practices lies in the regular cancellation of
sections in the last days of registration or even
after classes have begun. The lack of institutional
commitment to temporary faculty gives colleges
this right with only positive fiscal consequences
when a section has been under-subscribed. However,
the students who have planned and built their
schedule to include a particular class then find
themselves scrambling to fill the sudden hole
in their schedule, often with long-term consequences.
These include the loss of time and money when
an additional term is required to finish their
community college education. Of course, the part-time
faculty members find themselves suddenly without
20% to 100% of their expected income with little
hope of finding comparable employment during the
next four to eight months.
Currently there are structures
in the Education Code that allow part-time tenure
for regular faculty under reduced load. There
are also structures for the smooth transition
of temporary faculty to part-time contract status
and then part-time regular status when the 60%
of full load limitation on temporary assignments
has been violated. The transition respects current
tenure review processes.
Minor changes in the Education
Code could easily be developed which would restrict
the use of temporary assignments to short-term
substitutions for existing contract and regular
faculty positions, and for one-year assignments
to provide for an orderly hiring process in adjusting
to curriculum change and enrollment growth. Many
of these temporary assignments could be full-time
and full year assignments if qualified candidates
were available. Part-time positions for lower
enrolled disciplines and specialized areas of
instruction, and for experimental courses and
programs, could be hired into the current normal
full-time hiring process, first as contract faculty
undergoing tenure review, and then as regular
part-time faculty. These part-time contract faculty
members could be hired with the contractual understanding
that their tenure would be for a reduced load,
perhaps with the option of increasing their load
if discipline need developed. Of course, in the
case of experimental courses and programs, if
need for the new hire disappeared, so would the
position, and current regular procedures would
result in the orderly seniority based reduction
in force. However, since the affected new hires
would generally be in the first two years of contract
status, such specific reduction in force would
be a reasonably expected possibility for faculty
hired under experimental conditions.
Under such a modification of
current employment structures, all indications
are that, with the normal rate of faculty turnover
through retirement and changes in occupation,
plus the normal rate of regular faculty overload
assignments, use of temporary assignments could
be reduced to a few short-term substitutions for
regular faculty on leave or reassignment, even
in times of the greatest economic upheaval.
The American Association of
University Professors has recommended that:
…colleges and universities,
depending upon the manner in which they utilize
part-time faculty service, consider creating a
class of regular part-time faculty members, consisting
of individuals who, as their professional career,
share the teaching, research, and administrative
duties customary for faculty at their institution,
but who, for whatever reason do so less than full-time.
They should have the opportunity to achieve tenure
and the rights it confers. The Association stands
ready to provide guidance to institutions wishing
to develop such policies.
The AAUP Report noted an earlier,
1973 report by the Commission on Academic Freedom
and Tenure in Higher Education, which recommended
similarly. In 1987, the AAUP published a discussion
of Senior Appointments with Reduced Loads, which
expanded the recommendation for creating tenured
part-time positions to include "senior academic
appointments…without loss of status."
In 1987, the Chancellor's Office
noted that,
A 1980 survey by the College
and University Personnel Association (CUPA) of
795 institutions found that 14% offered tenure
to part-time continuing faculty (Gappa, 1984).
The criteria for eligibility in these cases was
the same as that for full-time faculty.
The first reaction of many to
such a proposal is concern for the additional
cost. However, this concern ignores the new context
created by California's determination to fund
comparable pay for comparable work and equitable
benefits. Given these circumstances, the reduced
administrative and hiring costs achieved by hiring
a more stable faculty may actually reduce overall
costs when compared to an attempt to maintain
the current system with its inherent contradictions
and negative impacts. But most importantly, a
faculty fully staffed by regular, tenured employees,
subject to the same hiring and evaluation processes
as full-time faculty, will significantly improve
the System's ability to serve the interests of
our students and of California.
With this in mind, in seeking
a long-term, comprehensive solution to the many
problems and issues discussed in this paper, the
Academic Senate will need to work to ensure that
structures that are developed will enhance the
professionalism of all faculty and protect their
academic freedom. To these ends, the Academic
Senate is committed to advising the Board of Governors
and the Legislature in support of professionally
sound policies regarding employment security and
due process for part-time faculty consistent with
Academic Senate policies and resolutions.
In seeking a long-term comprehensive
solution to the many problems and issues discussed
in this paper, the Academic Senate should engage
in a serious consideration of the implications
and advisability of extending the structures and
protections of earned tenure to regularly rehired
part-time faculty who have undergone rigorous
evaluation processes.
The Academic Senate remains
committed to the central importance of maintaining
a corps of full-time tenured faculty, and reaffirms
that "decisions regarding the appropriateness
of part-time faculty should be made on the basis
of academic and program needs . . . and not for
financial savings" (AB1725, Section 4 (b)).
Temporary assignments should be limited to short-term
responses to curriculum changes and enrollment
growth, allowing for rigorous, fair, and effective
hiring practices when stable need has been established,
or temporary substitutions for contract and regular
faculty on leave or reassignment.
SECTION V. Conclusion and
Recommendations
Conclusion
The problems created by decades
of arbitrary use and abuse of part-time faculty,
motivated largely by fiscal exigency demanded
by chronic underfunding, are complex and interdependent.
During the 2001-2002 budget cycle, the Legislature
and the Governor began to address the fundamental
cause of these problems. The California Community
College System must now try to formulate a comprehensive
solution for the long run while avoiding short-term
and partial solutions that create new and unnecessary
problems.
It is essential that, if we
are to attract and retain an excellent and diverse
faculty to serve the educational needs of coming
generations of Californians, we must take seriously
our obligations and pay close attention to the
coherence and integrity of the profession.
It is especially important that,
as we seek to establish ideal professional expectations
of faculty in response to the Board of Governors'
Policy Statement on Part-time Faculty Compensation,
we remember that the definitions and policies
being developed will have continuing long-term
impacts on faculty professionalism in regard to
all faculty, and will become a significant factor
in future funding for the entire California Community
College System. To these ends, we make the following
recommendations.
Recommendations
Policy Level Recommendations
1. The Academic Senate should
work to ensure that progress is made on improving
the number of full-time faculty at each college.
Maintaining a corps of full-time, tenured faculty
is central to academic excellence, academic integrity,
and academic freedom; it is key to serving our
students well.
2. The Academic Senate reaffirms
its commitment to the COFO Faculty Equity Statement,
and to increasing efforts to integrate part-time
faculty into senate activities at the local and
state level.
3. The Academic Senate reaffirms
past guidelines and recommendations presented
in the 1989 paper, Part-Time Faculty Hiring Procedures:
A Model Based on Assembly Bill 1725.
4. The Academic Senate should
undertake a comprehensive statewide review of
part-time faculty hiring and evaluation policies,
procedures, and their implementation. Such a review
would include:
the extent of implementation
of fair and effective hiring and evaluation
practices;
an analysis of turnover
and retention of part-time faculty;
an analysis of long term
changes in the diversity of part-time and
full-time faculty; and
the impact of current part-time
faculty employment practices on full-time
faculty and administrative responsibilities.
5. The Academic Senate should
develop recommended models to guide local senates
in developing career-oriented mentoring and evaluation
processes for part-time faculty that more closely
mirror the tenure review process. Such models
would be designed to integrate new part-time faculty
into the profession, the academic community, and
the colleges; and enhance the ability of part-time
faculty to serve their students.
6. The Academic Senate should
work with Consultation Council members and the
Board of Governors to develop mechanisms to ensure
that all California community college faculty
assignments include the expectation that students
will receive equitable opportunities for effective
contact with their instructors outside of the
regular class period.
7. The Academic Senate reaffirms
that "decisions regarding the appropriateness
of part-time faculty should be made on the basis
of academic and program needs…and not for
financial savings" (AB1725, Section 4 (b)).
The Senate recommends that the use of temporary
assignments should be limited to short-term responses
to:
curriculum changes, allowing
for rigorous, fair, and effective hiring practices
when stable need has been established;
enrollment growth, allowing
for rigorous, fair, and effective hiring practices
when stable need has been established; and,
temporary substitutions
for contract and regular faculty on leave
or reassignment.
8. The Academic Senate should
work with other faculty and administrative organizations
to develop structures that will enhance the professionalism
of all faculty and protect their academic freedom.
To these ends, the Academic Senate is committed
to advising the Board of Governors and the Legislature
in support of professionally sound policies regarding
employment security and due process for part-time
faculty consistent with Academic Senate policies
and resolutions.
9. In seeking a long-term comprehensive
solution to the many problems and issues discussed
in this paper, the Academic Senate will engage
in a serious consideration of the implications
and advisability of extending the structures and
protections of tenure to regularly rehired part-time
faculty who have undergone rigorous evaluation
processes.
Recommendations to Local Academic
Senates
1. The Academic Senate recommends
that local senates work with their local collective
bargaining agent, administration and board of
trustees to establish principled definitions and
policies regarding part-time faculty pay equity,
"comparable pay for comparable work"
and what should be the professional expectations
of all faculty.
2. The Academic Senate recommends
that local senates work with their collective
bargaining agent, administration and trustees,
to establish local policies and negotiated agreements
that provide compensated office hours as a part
of all instructional assignments-in order to ensure
that all students have equitable access to their
instructors outside of class.
3. The Academic Senate recommends
that local senates work together with their collective
bargaining agent, administration and trustees
to devise creative options to traditional office
hours. These options might include email accessibility,
telephone office hours, and online chat rooms.
Such alternatives to traditional office space
and time do not abrogate the necessity of compensating
part-time faculty for services rendered, nor should
they be assumed to fully replace the need for
traditional face-to-face contact between students
and faculty outside of class.
References
Academic Senate for California
Community Colleges, Academic
Freedom and Tenure: A Faculty Perspective (1998)
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges,
Participation
of Part-time Faculty on the Executive Committee
of The Academic Senate for California Community
Colleges (1998)
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges,
Part-Time Faculty
Hiring Procedures: A Model Based on Assembly Bill
1725 (1989).
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges,
Part-Time Faculty
in the California Community Colleges (1992).
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges,
Re-examination
of Faculty Hiring Processes and Procedures
(Fall 2000).
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges,
The Use of
Part-Time Faculty in California Community Colleges:
Issues and Impact (1996).
American Association of University Professors,
Senior Appointments with Reduced Loads (1987)
American Association of University Professors,
Committee C, Statement on Faculty Workload, (October,
1969).
The American Association of University Professors,
Status and Use of Part-time Faculty, (1980)
Astin, Alexander What Matters in College: Four
Critical Years Revisited. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.
(1993).
Bureau of State Audits, California Community Colleges:
Part-Time
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for Teaching Activities (2000).
California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office,
2005 Study Data.
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Report on Staffing for Fall 2000, (November 29,
2001)
California Community College Chancellor's Office
Analytical Studies Unit, Report on faculty Employment
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California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office,
Study of Part-time Instruction, (1987)
California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office,
Staffing and Salary Changes: 1981-82 thru 1983-84,
(1985)
California Postsecondary Education Commission
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California Postsecondary Education Commission,
Report
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Master Plan Survey Team, A Master Plan for Higher
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National Study for Postsecondary Faculty, Background
Characteristics, Work Activities, and Compensation
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Institutions: Fall 1998, (2001)
Nussbaum, Thomas J., Important Historical Data,
Trends, and Analysis Relevant to Full-time/Part-time
Issues California Community College Chancellor's
Office, (1999).
Tinto, Vincent Leaving College: Rethinking the
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