June 17, 2011 Inside Higher Ed (excerpted)
Fifteen years ago, the faculty union at Green River Community College persuaded administrators to add one new full-time faculty position each year (in 2003, it became two positions per year) in order to better balance the percentages of full-time and part-time faculty members (there are now more than twice as many part-time instructors as full-time faculty members). In the most recent contract, which lapsed earlier this month, a Memorandum of Understanding spells out the rationale, saying that Green River “is motivated to improve the ratio of full-time to adjunct faculty to support the highest quality of teaching for our students.”Extending that agreement into the next contract has become a major stumbling block in negotiations, said Hank Galmish, a full-time faculty member of the English department and treasurer of the Green River United Faculty Coalition, which represents both full- and part-time faculty, and is affiliated primarily with the American Federation of Teachers, as well as with the National Education Association. “This has become the bone of contention: the Memorandum of Understanding,” he said. “People are very concerned we may be losing some of our mission here.”
The proposed budget for Washington, which has been approved by the Legislature and awaits Governor Christine Gregoire’s signature, would reduce Green River’s state appropriation by $4.8 million over the next two years — a cut of about 12 percent. Hiring part-timers also continues to be cheaper for the college: employing a part-timer instead of a full-timer to teach three courses every day saves the college $35,000 over the course of a year. At the same time, full-timers argue that their jobs include more advising, service and oversight, which makes it difficult to reliably compare their pay and job duties (while many adjuncts say that they would love the chance to share in the duties reserved for full-timers).
…………..Full-time faculty at Green River are quick to point out that their concerns about quality are not based on any sense that part-time faculty make inferior teachers. In fact, several pointed out the opposite — that the teaching skills of adjuncts may be superior, but that they and their students suffer when low pay compels them to juggle multiple jobs, none of which comes with dedicated office space. “It’s not that they’re not good teachers,” said Mark Millbauer, president of the Green River United Faculty Coalition. “They just don’t have time.”
Millbauer and John Avery, a full-time faculty member of Green River’s English for Speakers of Other Languages Department, cited research conducted by Daniel Jacoby, a professor of economics at the University of Washington at Bothell, which sought to draw attention to the correlation between higher rates of full-time faculty at community colleges and the graduation rates of students. The inverse was also true. “Those institutions with the highest percentages of adjuncts also had the lowest graduation rates,” Avery said in a memo addressed earlier this month to Green River trustees. “That information is compelling and believable since it is full-time faculty who have the time and the commitment to design effective curriculum, manage programs and maintain contact with students through advising.”