Part-time instructors at one Georgia college are advocating for better pay, support and even permanent jobs for a class of professionals that has become a low-cost employment option for many colleges and universities.
Today members of Kennesaw State University’s part-time faculty council plan an awareness day on campus, modeled after an event in February at campuses across the nation.
The awareness day comes as the number of part-time instructors on campuses has risen nationally. For years, colleges and universities, like those in Georgia, have relied on these contract workers to keep costs low and balance declining budgets. Now, those workers are organizing to push for higher wages and long-term contracts.
“We want to call attention to the plight of part-timers, to the fact we are very well educated and very well qualified, but we’re paid so little,” said Yvonne Wichman, president of KSU’s part-time faculty council, which has become a leader in the part-time movement in the state. “We all have master’s (degrees), many have Ph.D.s. Some are retired public school teachers, so they’re teaching for the love of teaching, but others are young and at the beginning of their careers, they want full-time work.”
Nationally, more than 5o percent of all faculty hold part-time positions, according to the American Association of University Professors. However, groups of part-time instructors have begun to organize around the country pushing for — and in some cases securing — higher wages and long-term contracts.
Adjunct, or part-time. instructors are hired to work on a contractual basis, instead of in a permanent position or tenure track. They don’t receive benefits beyond what they’re paid to teach a class, University System officials said. That salary can range from $2,200 to $3,000 per course, or an average of about $800 per credit hour.
When Jason Rhodes was hired as a part-time instructor at Kennesaw State in summer 2013 he was making so little his daughter qualified for state-funded health care. As a recent Ph.D. recipient, Rhodes took the part-time position in hopes it would lead to full-time work.
“It’s a stark contrast between the $50 million buildings you see on campuses and the situations of the people who work in them,” said Rhodes, 43, who is an officer in the part-time council. He was recently selected for an interim full-time position at Kennesaw, but while the new position comes with better pay and benefits, it’s limited to four months, he said. “There’s no job security. You know the clock is ticking.”
For Rhodes, the plight of part-time instructors goes beyond the low pay to an issue of the quality of education.
“I would like to see the faculty begin a dialogue with students and say as consumers, are you getting what you’re paying for?” he said.
Kennesaw State has a pool of about 1,300 part-time instructors in any given semester, with about 850 teaching in the classroom, said Ken Harmon, the university’s provost and vice president of academic affairs. Campus administrators are working on ways to increase part-timers’ pay, provide better office space and make them more involved in campus affairs.
“It is true that part-time faculty are less expensive in the long run,” Harmon said. “But I would hate not to have part-timers in the classroom because I think they bring something special to the classroom. We have to make sure they are appropriately respected.”
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